Accidents and Aftermath
by Dreaming of Everything
Summary: When Hiei is poisoned, causing temporary insanity, he severely wounds Botan, who's now comatose, hovering on the brink of death. This fic is a series of onesided conversations between the two as Hiei deals with his own self and the aftermath. HB. COMPLETE
1. Guilt

**Accidents and Aftermath** (working title)

**Chapter 1: Guilt**

**A/N**: I find inspiration in the oddest places.

I hope you all enjoy this!

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho and any and all related characters and events. I do not own Sarah Louise Adrien. I do not own Rosette Christopher or any people/events related to Chrono Crusade. I do not own Robert Frost or his poems. I do not own Saiyuki. I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist. I do not own this computer, fanfic dot net and the Internet. I do not own the world in part or whole. I hereby disclaim everything recognizable in this fic and otherwise. Sue me now!

All 'quotes' don't actually exist and were written entirely and only by me.

The poison I use as a plot device is entirely fictional and had never appeared in any book, movie, legend, anime, manga or fanfiction that I am aware of.

It was supposed to be a simple, routine mission: go in, beat a bunch of demons to a bloody pulp, get out and go home happy.

Nobody had been prepared for what had happened.

True, they were a bunch of lower-class demons that should have been no problem whatsoever. True, there were no unusual problems with the spirit detectives. However, it was also true that they were a rather more intelligent batch of lower-class demons than they regularly encountered.

The problems started with an elaborate batch of traps, cleverly hidden and ended with an attempt to poison Hiei.

Some of the traps were successful; some weren't. They were merely an annoyance, no matter what.

The attempt to poison Hiei was very successful indeed. It was anything but an annoyance.

_The Jagan is both an extremely powerful weapon and a weakness; once it is mastered the strengths easily compensate for the flaw in the bodys' defenses, at least for the most part._

_--Demonology, Author Unknown_

_There is a certain Makai poison that is scentless, invisible and insubstantial; a clear gas heavier than air, there is no way to detect it easily. In large quantities known to cause madness. Very few are even aware of its existence. Attracted to supernatural energy, including demonic, the poison cannot enter any demon because of natural defenses. There is an exception to this as well: an implanted Jagan, not a part of the natural body, is easily breached by the foreign substance..._

_--Guide to the Dangers of Makai, volume 37c part II, by S. L. Adrien. _(1)

_...symptoms of this variety of poisoning may include dizziness, fainting spells, an interruption of the bodies' natural healing abilities, a weakening of the muscles, nausea and, in some cases, bursts of spirit energy that can be utilized by the patient..._

_--The Reikai Healer's Manual: An Instruction Book by and For Diagnosing and Healing Ferry Girls by Rosette Christopher (2)_

As they maneuvered around (or, in Botan's case, above,) the traps lining the trail, instincts were going haywire throughout the entire group. Kuwabara especially, with his strong sixth sense, had the feeling that something was utterly and completely wrong; surprisingly, Botan was a close second.

"I feel all... Jangly..." muttered the girl. "And... sort of... dizzy?"

Kurama, the only one to over hear her comment, looked worriedly at her. "Botan? Are you okay?"

"..."

"Botan?" repeated Kurama, with a little more urgency.

"...No..."

The deity landed carefully, her oar dematerializing. She swayed slightly, hit by a sudden wave of dizziness.

"...Something's wrong..." she whispered. She was having trouble standing still, and now she felt almost like she was going to pass out...

"Has she been poisoned?" asked Yusuke. "But I feel fine... And why would someone try to poison Botan?"

A sudden scraping noise made them turn; they were surprised to find Hiei, wild-eyed, clutching at his drawn sword, his breath coming hard.

"...Hiei?" asked Kurama, turning the single word into a question.

And then all Hell broke loose.

A sudden swarm of demons seemed to materialize out of the surrounding forest, attacking the group. As was previously mentioned, they were all lower-class demons, generally speaking not a problem.

However, with the surrounding traps, the enclosed space and the fact that the attackers had no qualms about attacking their own, they were hampered. Yusuke was unable to use his reigun in such close quarters, ditto Kurama's rose whip, and Hiei was still in a weird state, unable to fight at all; Botan and Hiei both needed protecting, another stumbling block.

Despite all the setbacks it was going fairly well, the three able fighters cleaving their way through the demons. However...

Yusuke turned in time to see Hiei rise, sword in hand, a strange burning fire in his eyes. He watched, horrified, unable to move fast enough, as Hiei blurred into movement, (He recovered so quickly...) started to move towards Kurama, (Maybe he was going to help?) his sword biting deep into Botan's side (She was in his way... Her blood so red...) as he attacked the kitsune; Kurama dodged the blade, hit away a minor demon who still persisted in attacking him, jumped to the side just quickly enough to miss another slash from the half-koorime...

A reigun blast, one without enough intensity to kill, hit the fire demon, knocking him out. Kurama hurried to Botan's side, attempted to staunch the flow of blood; as he worked his plants quickly tied up Hiei, holding him helpless. While he was busy Yusuke and Kuwabara quickly, brutally and efficiently disposed of their remaining attackers.

Once their area of forest had been cleared of demons the three aware members of the group gathered.

"We have no way to get back," pointed out Kurama. "Botan's unconscious."

"And what do we do with Hiei?" asked Yusuke, looking at his (also unconscious) bound body.

"Take him to Koenma, I suppose..." said Kurama. His betrayal had been a blow to everyone, even those he professed to hate: he had so much as told Kuwabara that he didn't switch sides once he had decided which he was on.

Kuwabara looked around. "Let's at least carry 'em back to where the portal was..." he said, looking at the dead bodies flung around the area.

Botan slowly opened her eyes, barely conscious, as they came into the clearing. A strange buzzing energy seemed to fill her, for some reason; it hurt, though... It felt almost like she could do anything.

"Botan?" said Yusuke.

"Botan, could you get us back to Reikai?" asked Kurama gently.

Koenma looked up in horror as Botan fell onto his office floor from a portal, unconscious again and frighteningly pale. Behind her came in Kurama, Kuwabara and Yusuke, dazed and shaken. Yusuke was carrying an equally ill-looking Hiei, still knocked out and bound tightly.

"What happened?" gasped out the ruler of Reikai.

"They need medical attention," said Kurama.

"Oh! Yes! Right! **George**!"

"...Hiei did that? No..."

Yusuke had never expected the fire demon to turn on them like that. Attack anyone... He had been their _friend_, damnit, he had trusted him with his life more than once... And now Botan was badly hurt because of him...

Damn him.

"Poison? What?" said Koenma, looking up, startled.

"Yes, Sir," said the ogre tiredly. He had been trying to get him to pay attention to him for five minutes, now. "Traces of a rare Makai poison was found in the bloodstreams of both Hiei and Botan."

"Why only them?" frowned the Prince of Reikai.

"I was about to explain, Sir. The poison, a gas, would normally be repelled by the bodys' defenses, but Botan's time as a human and Hiei's Jagan negated those protective layers. The poison was able to penetrate into the body."

"Well, that explains why they're both still out cold after a day and a half."

"It's particularly bad for Botan; the poison on top of her wound has put her into an extremely dangerous state. Her condition is very unstable right now, Sir."

"And what do you know about what happened to Hiei?"

"The poison is known to cause temporary insanity in demons. We're flushing it from his bloodstream—hopefully we'll finish before he regains consciousness—and he should be fine once the purifying process is finished."

There was a sigh of deep relief from Koenma. Hate to confess it though he did, he had _relied_ on Hiei, and on Kuwabara, Kurama and Yusuke, who relied on the moody demon in return.

"You heard?" said Yusuke to Kurama; they were waiting in the hospital area of Reikai for Hiei to regain consciousness.

"I heard," said the boy with a sigh. "It's... A mixed set of feelings."

"It's nice to know it wasn't Hiei who attacked you and Botan," said Yusuke plainly. "Or at least not a rational Hiei."

"Do you know what kinds of Hell this is going to cause in him?" said Kurama, just as blunt.

"What..." began Yusuke.

Kurama continued. Obviously he needed someone to vent to.

"I'm worried about how this will affect Hiei. You know how he is. Always so critical of where he could do better... And you can see it in how he cares for Yukina, the moments when he shares his devotion to his friends. He will blame himself for this. For hurting Botan."

Yusuke knew it was true.

Hiei regained awareness slowly.

A small murmur escaped his lips as he drifted back into consciousness. He instinctively reached for his sword—he was waking up in a strange area, after all—and moved into a strange form of panic as he found he was tied down, with both his Jagan and he himself heavily warded.

Kurama and Yusuke hurried over as they noticed Hiei's attempt to reach his sword, which had actually been removed.

"Hiei?" asked Kurama as they approached him, careful to stay outside of the wardings that had been placed around the bed.

"Where am I?"

"You're in the Reikai hospital ward," said Kurama carefully.

Memories slowly trickled back into his mind. He had suddenly 'blanked out,' he remembered...

_And then been struck with an insatiable urge to kill; he flung himself at Kurama, the closest of the near-by powerful opponents. He swung out at Botan, a mere distraction between him and Kurama; his concentration was focused solely on the upcoming fight. Now, as he re-watched the scene happen, he could see the ferry girl collapse, bleeding heavily, shock and horror and fear stamped onto her features._

_And then he was fighting him, or rather, he was trying to kill him while he dodged, before Yusuke hit him a reigun, a last desperate measure. And then everything was the black infinity of unconsciousness..._

A harshly drawn-in breath tore through his throat as a painful sigh. "... I killed Botan...!"

"She's alive," interjected Yusuke. "Oh, the doctor says we can take these down now." He quickly dismantled the wardings that been placed in case Hiei woke up still homicidal, while Kurama untied the fire demon and handed him his sword.

"How serious is it?" said the fire demon, careful to keep his voice and face glacial.

"At this point... We don't know if she'll live. The wound was fairly deep and she took in a lot of the poison... They can't heal her because of interference from her own white magic, and they can't flush the poison from her system like they did with you because of the delicacy of her state."

Hiei froze inside. Another death, and all his fault... No, Botan's death, with only him to take the blame...

"If you want, I'll show you to her..." said Kurama quietly.

Hiei followed behind the 'fox' down the hallway, subdued and silent even for him. Never a big talker, he was silent as the grave; it was almost as if his entire presence had sunk in on itself, reduced.

The room was relatively small, very bare and utilitarian; carefully constructed wards designed to protect, feed and watch over Botan were carefully carved into the wood; further protective measures, written on paper, were carefully pasted around the room. A single plain chair, made of hard, utilitarian wood, stood next to the bed, obviously placed for visitors.

Botan herself lay on the bed, a thin cotton sheet pulled over her form; someone had replaced her torn, bloody clothes with clean ones. She was disturbingly still, her only movement the steady and slight rise and fall of her breath.

"I'll leave you alone," said Kurama, tactfully withdrawing. Hiei heard and logged the words subconsciously at best, his entire mind full of conflicting emotions and an overwhelming, struggling guilt.

The silence was a heavy weight pressing down on the two. It was nearly tangible, thickening the heavy air.

Hiei, still standing by the now-closed door, slowly walked over to the head of Botan's bed, standing to the side of it and looking down on her solemn face.

_She looks so serious, severe..._ thought Hiei. _Ironic how her personality, the opposite of serious, was what I hated most about her._ Now he ignored the part of him wishing that she was once more there and giggling, laughing, making stupid comments, getting in the way, being a bother.

The silence was thick, heavy, uncomfortable. Unnatural...

Words sprang unbidden to his lips.

"I've killed more people than you and Koenma have ever guessed at. I've been responsible for so many deaths over the years that I've lost count. And I never cared, you know. It was just the way things were. The way things should be. The strong, the predators, defeating the weak prey, and I was always strongest.

"And then I wasn't. Yusuke defeated me, and then I was ordered into helping him as a spirit detective. I was working with other people... Next we found Yukina, and it was my duty to watch over her. I grew... attached...

"I always hated you, you know. You're useless. Pointless. No reason for your existence. So why should I feel guilty that you're nearing a second death? I should be happy that one more annoyance will never bother me again. I should be happy, congratulating myself that I rid the world of a useless pest and won't get thrown into Reikai jail for it.

"I am not... unhappy about it.

"Why am I so guilty?"

The silence continued to choke the room, continuing as if Hiei had never spoken. Botan lay unmoving, unaware. Everything was exactly as it had been. Unmoving. Unchanging. Endless.

(1) S. L. Adrien is the main character from the truly wonderful Sarah fics by InterNutter, who is my fanfiction goddess. The S. L. is for Sarah Louise.

(2) What?

(You either get this one or you don't. Please ignore me. If you **really really need to know** you have no life. Not that that matters. Ask me in a review and/or email or look it up on Google. Reviews are easier and make me happier.)

**A/N**: I know SOMEBODY's going to think this is out of character. .:cowers:. Please don't flame? It's sad to see a fanficcer tremble. I have self-esteem issues as it is.

This **is** a determined plea for reviews. Please? Like I said: self-esteem issues. On some level I know I'm a pretty decent writer but my subconscious has trouble with that idea. I'm putting myself on the proverbial silver platter, complete with a sign saying 'Please devour me alive.' It plays havoc with my nerves and I don't need these issues as school starts up again. .:keels over and dies:.

Plus I absolutely adore long rambling reviews that go nowhere, constructive criticism and people. Please review! I'm begging you here!


	2. Envy

**Accidents and Aftermath **

**Chapter Two: Envy**

**A/N**: A lot of writing, to me, is resisting the urge to play into stereotypes. It's so easy to think, Oh, Kuwabara's just an idiot who only thinks about his cat and Yukina, and Botan doesn't think about **any**thing serious, she's such a ditz, and Yukina's sweet and innocent, really childlike, because she acts like that most of the time. Often, I find the hardest part is getting enough of a sense of a character, especially a fairly minor one, to see how they'd react, because everyone, even Kuwabara, Botan and Yukina, have their doubts, fears, moments of depression (but not necessarily angst) and darker emotions.

My, I'm serious today. Must be the chicken soup.

I hope you all appreciate me writing this through the Cold from Hell, which has visited its wrath upon me. .:coughs miserably:.

There was a steady stream of visitors the next day, going in one and two at a time to leave a note or card, a small present or flowers for the comatose Botan.

She would have been amazed to see the crowd they made: Kurama, Yukina, Koenma, Yusuke, Kuwabara, Keiko, Shizuru, Genkai, Ayame and... and Hiei.

Worry clouded the corridors of Reikai as the girl continued to hover on the edge of life. Always a delicate balance, even at the best of times. Life is so fragile, frail, so easily lost...

The amount of concern for her would have startled the ferry girl, if she had known about it. While she was the Grim Reaper, the living embodiment of Death, the chance of a second death was there, and always closer. All ferry girls were given a semblance of life for their duties, and what can be given can always be revoked.

"**Damn** it!" yelled Yusuke, slamming his fist into a nearby wall. A lone ogre scurrying past shot him a scared look before hurrying away.

Kurama stood silently nearby, watching impassively.

"I could have stopped him earlier! I could have protected her! I could... I... **Damn**." He sighed, his rage seeming to trickle out of him. "All this power, and she might die. Die, and there's nothing I can do."

"Stop sulking, brat. There's nothing you could have done," said Genkai, walking up behind him. "Don't beat yourself up over it. Work to fix the things that need it, not what doesn't. **It's not your fault**."

Yusuke just stood and looked and her, face an open book, one filled with a chaotic rush of emotions.

Genkai sighed. "Come with me, boy," she stated, walking briskly down the hall, gesturing for him to follow.

Kurama was left alone in the hallway, trapped in his own mind, a circular train of thought repeating endlessly, with no way to solve it. _Death was a likely option right now, with Botan in this state; there was a chance she would never recover all. She might never recover from the coma, and stay like that forever. And Hiei... Hiei, who already struggled with guilt—what else would keep him from telling Yukina he was her brother?—and now faced this: it would destroy him in a way that past years hadn't._

Subconsciously Kurama began pacing, backwards and forwards, the repetitive, worried movement mirroring his thoughts.

_He had watched him open up to the world, shed some of his cold, impenetrable protective layer, and been secretly happy. He had changed, for the better, and now this had happened... To an earlier Hiei it would have been immaterial, but now... Now... Everything changed, and he had followed that rule._

_The best possible outcome, but still not a good one, would be that Hiei would retreat once more into his emotionless state, a killer and thief who simply didn't care, single-minded in his goals and impervious to anything else. All other options were... Unthinkable._

Kurama noticed his pacing and made a concerted effort to stop himself, standing still for a moment before going to find a ferry girl to take him back to Ningenkai. His green eyes were troubled, his face eerily blank, as he made his way through the winding corridors of the spirit world.

Keiko had been given a chair in a waiting-room, for lack of a better word, where she sat sobbing quietly in her hands, her body shaking with her grief, eyes streaming with tears, eerily out-of-place with her silence. Anyone going past, with no exceptions, gave her worried and sympathetic glances.

_Botan might die. _True, she hadn't gotten along with her at first, thinking Yusuke was...romantically involved with her, but eventually she had discovered the truth—that Botan wasn't even _alive_ in the traditional sense of the word—and they had become friends. Keiko suspected that she was the only close girl friend that Botan had...

A fresh bout of silent sobs wracked Keiko's body as she did her best to muffle her grief.

Koenma stared at the mountains of papers at his desk, knowing that he should be working on them but unable to bring himself to do it. Not while Botan was so close to a second death...

Guilt. He had always taken her for granted; she was dependable, reliable, a constant: **always** there, **always** reachable, **always**. In a way nobody else was, and now she wasn't. She had been too much of a constant, until he appreciated her just as much as the walls: an important thing, yeah, but something to be **expected**.

But she was more than that.

And now she might never be the same at all.

No, he couldn't work at all, no matter how much he had, no matter how important it was. Holding vigil wouldn't help, he knew, but it was all he could do.

Kuwabara moved woodenly through the every-day motions of life, mechanically reading through the book they had been assigned for class while he waited for his turn to check in on Botan.

True, he didn't normally do his homework, though he did just often enough to keep himself from expulsion. This wasn't that sort of situation: he needed something—**anything**—to keep him from thinking.

Because Botan might die.

Die.

He hadn't expected that. He knew that they had a dangerous line of work, and that there was a good chance one or more of them would be seriously injured, fatally so.

But **Botan**...! She was Death. She had already died once. Sometimes she was intangible and she didn't technically need sleep or food to survive, except in her human body! Still, the impossible had happened...

It didn't seem fair that she might die twice.

And he couldn't afford to think about it: he knew that it wouldn't go away if he ignored it, but he couldn't help the impulse. And, more so, he knew that he needed to function, to be capable of continuing life as if nothing was wrong. And if he let himself grieve, if he allowed himself the luxury of worrying, he would break down. It was all or nothing, and nothing was the only choice...

The painful numbness in his mind made it difficult to concentrate on his book. On anything.

Yukina offered comfort in as many ways as she could as she moved through the waiting room. A softly whispered word, a hand placed on a shoulder, an understanding nod. The volatile roomful of people needed holding together, a calming presence.

She was all that there was.

Yukina was careful to ignore her own pain: she had become friends with Botan. She was her first friend, really. But she couldn't let the gaping hole in her heart distract her. After all, she was needed. Her own pain could come... later. No matter how much it hurt now.

"...and he's refused to leave her room!" twittered one maid to another as they paused in the hallways, leaning close to each other, as if they were conspirators in some important plot.

"Imagine!" said the other. "Hurting the poor girl like that, and then spending so much time near her unwatched! _I_ can't believe Koenma allows it."

"I know! Especially since they're so... **close**." The two exchanged knowing smiles and smothered an outburst of giggling.

"It's scandalous! I don't even want to **imagine** what he's doing, with her so alone, and incapable of defending herself..."

"I can't believe no one's complained yet!"

"Does anyone know?"

"Yes! There've been people in and out all day! At least he hasn't had too long alone with her uninterrupted..."

"Thank heavens!"

Kurama, walking past, caught a snatch of their conversation; pausing, he gathered **just** as much information as was incriminating before walking determinedly over to the two.

"Well, look who's coming over here!" said one of them in what was supposed to be a whisper. The other looked over, attempting to be unobtrusive, then broke out in a fit of smothered laughter, soon joined by the other.

Kurama stopped just short of them, his face frozen; someone who knew him well would be able to recognize furious displeasure.

"You two do laundry for Reikai, yes?" he said pleasantly.

"Yes," they giggled together.

"Then I recommend to stick to it," he replied, giving them a sub-zero glare. "And I advise you to keep your noses out of business that **does not concern you**, as, you'll find, busy-bodies are never," he paused to give them a smile that promised pain, "tolerated."

The two were still standing there, frozen, as he walked away.

Hiei knew it was late, if not how late. The light in the room had slowly dimmed until it was barely lit, cloaked in dusky darkness. The only way to mark the passage of time had been the arrival and departure of the visitors, but that had trailed off and then ended. Hiei had finally been left alone, the only person in the room. Slowly he had fallen into a nearly meditative state, lost in the maze of his mind.

He was shaken from his thoughts by the arrival of a night nurse sent to check up on Botan; while there were spells set around her to monitor her condition they still wanted to keep a (somewhat) human eye on the ferry girl.

He shifted his position slightly, attracting the attention of the nurse, who gave a frightened squeak, quickly muffled, as she caught sight of the malevolent figure, wreathed in shadows, watching over Botan; the deep red of his eyes glinted in the slight amount of light in the room.

Remembering who _exactly_ was watching over Botan (Hiei! A demon! Murderer and thief serving community service!)—she already knew he was watching over her, because of all the gossip floating around about it; I mean, after all he was just **sitting** there, **watching** her, that couldn't be moral! Not when it was **him**!—the nurse quickly finished her duties before hurrying from the room, leaving Hiei alone once more.

To him, it was a painful reminder of who he was. Though he hadn't read her thoughts, her face had been expressive enough that he hadn't needed to.

A few more painfully slow moments trickled past, slow as syrup.

Slowly, hesitantly, the demon began to speak aloud.

"I wonder if you would have expected every one who came to visit you today. I wonder if you know how many people care enough to visit. So many people came, even though you're in a coma and can't respond to them, don't even know that they came...

"Do you know how lucky you are? How many lives you've touched? How many people can't imagine a world without you?

"For some reason, I can only imagine seeing you surprised about that. And I **don't**... **know**... **why**. How could you not know how many people need you? You're everything someone should be: friendly, open, enthusiastic. Warm and caring. Everyone likes you; you're a likable person, and I know you're not so stupid that you haven't noticed... So why?

"I suppose I'm jealous, you know. Nobody... There would be nobody at my bedside if the situation was reversed. I wouldn't even have a bedside to be at: nobody would go to that extent for a demon thief who was caught in the act, forced into community service.

"I wish... I wish you knew how many people cared. I wish you could see everyone who showed up to wish you well.

"...

"...I wish that I knew that someone would do the same for me."

The room remained dark, cold and silent, with only the slight rise and fall of Botan's chest, frighteningly slow and shallow, signaling that she still lived. Her skin was pale, her face drawn, and the shadows cast on her were over-emphasized by the slight light, turning it her features into either severe black or sterile white, with none of the normal shades of gray.

It would be a long and lonely night.

**A/N**: Y'all better appreciate this, 'cause if I hadn't written this, despite the fact that I feel like absolute **_hell_,** it would probably be another week plus until I got done with it. Tell me so in a review, in fact, if you **do** appreciate it. They're good for me, reviews are, approximately on par with cough drops. See how important you are? Seriously. I would have given up the will to live **long** ago if it wasn't for them. And you. So, in short, I am now officially delusional.

Now I'm off to attempt to eat beef stew and cough drops, enjoy what reviews I get and enjoy as much sleep as is humanly possible. This will be interspersed with hideous sore throats, a drippy nose, attempts to hack out a lung, excruciatingly painful headaches and **cramps**, because life's too cruel to have just one thing happen at once.

...Maybe I won't walk into a wall this time. Getting the 'flu shuts down my mental processes, y'see... Yeah, it's a long (and spectacularly stupid) story


	3. Respect

**Accidents and Aftermath**

**Chapter Three: Respect**

**A/N**: This has taken a while, but I will not abandon this story. I hope you enjoy! As always, if you read, review, please! It's only common courtesy, especially if you fav.

Thank you to all of my reviewers!

"Botan's current condition is a comatose state of unknown permanence. Her indigenous white magic ability is working to repair internal and external damage as well as negate the effects of the poison, which targeted her healing abilities as well. This all feeds off of itself, creating the worst possible conditions for her continued well-being.

"Her own body is healing itself, meaning that we are unable to do more than the most basic and preliminary treatments without interfering, which would cause a prolongation of the time it would take her to heal at best and a slow, painful drawn-out death at worst. From what we have been able to gauge of her state, some minimal amount of improvement has occurred.

"At this point in time, we do not know if, when or to what extent she will recover. There are any number of possibilities, and we are unable to assist or garner enough information to tell.

"The only course of action is to sit, wait and see what comes of the natural turn of events. We should be able to make a more definite diagnosis a little later. Both a complete recovery and a relapse into a persistent vegetative state are potential possibilities at this point."

The doctor finished reading, rolled up her papers, stuck them into briefcase and marched swiftly out the door, as if guessing that her presence would be most definitely unappreciated.

The room was left with the sort of thick, nervous buzzing silence that comes with the let-down after a climax, before the events—the verdict—sinks in.

Kurama resumed his pacing; he had frozen momentarily for the announcement itself. Yusuke was sitting, eerily subdued, while Genkai, poker face firmly in place, sat stiffly next to him. Yukina clutched frozenly at Keiko's hand as the other girl sobbed into her shoulder; Kuwabara looked lost, nearly, confused and shocked. Hiei wasn't even in the room, still sitting by Botan's side.

So much power, so little use. There was nothing they could do.

Life adjusts; nothing is so adaptable. The facts (Botan might or might not be fine,) didn't go away, were always directly in the minds of all involved, but they worked around it, eventually, even if only because they had to. A more somber, severe life, maybe, but it continued.

"Urameshi's changed in the past few days," whispered one girl to another as they passed by him in school. "I wonder what happened!"

"I know! He acts like his girlfriend died or something!"

"He's so scary! He beat up a whole gang, you know, yesterday, when they started asking him about what had him so sad..."

"But he's showing up to school on time... It's almost like he's trying to shape up!"

"**I** think there's something he's trying to avoid."

Even the wrong train of thought can lead to the right conclusion. Yusuke was avoiding facts. If he kept busy, even if that meant going to school, he could keep from thinking about..._anything _too deeply, he could keep it at bay while he slowly came to terms.

Because it was _his_ fault. Despite what all the others said, no matter how much Genkai protested, he knew that it all linked back to him in the end. Not Hiei's, because Hiei had lost his control through no fault of his own. Not anyone else's', but entirely his fault.

His conscious mind insisted that it was irrational; survivor's guilt, if you will, but his subconscious urgings were too strong.

His. Fault.

Yukina was often viewed as innocent, and she was. But she was also a demon who had been reviled by her mothers' species, the Koorime, and then imprisoned for her tear gems.

The birds who had been her only companionship had been killed.

Innocence had met cruelty and reality simultaneously, and the result was herself. So while she knew that Botan should survive, she knew that that didn't mean she would. She knew that she wanted Botan to survive, but that didn't affect the chance that Botan would never wake up.

Nothing, though could keep her from hoping that her friend would be fine. Genkai's temple could be... Lonely. The talkative ferry girl had helped, sometimes.

And then there was Hiei. He had never been anything but kind to her; he had even offered to help track down her half-brother. True, he was withdrawn, antisocial and sometimes surly, but he had actively cared. And now he was refusing to leave Botan's side—Yukina could guess that he felt guilty. Even though he had never admitted to as much as tolerating Botan (though she had her own suspicions about that) he was a person underneath all his layers of masks, and one who took care of those around him. He was… fiercely loyal.

Maybe worst of all was the fact that Botan was one of the only people she couldn't heal: her demonic powers might not be safe interacting with the white magic Botan had naturally. Any healing might interfere with her own magic, but her own powers most of all. It had never been a problem before now; Botan had never been hurt—certainly not seriously—before now.

Everything changes, though. Yukina knew that maybe most of all.

Kurama jerked himself awake; he had gotten virtually no sleep, poring over all the demonic texts he had access to. Most of them had been stolen but a few had been come by honestly; there weren't very many of them that were relevant. Demons had never been, as a whole, big on healing. Still, it was his best bet. There had to be **something**, anything, that would help Botan. Some little-known cure, some obscure anti-venom now lost to time.

He knew it was probably a futile search. It was completely unlike him to obsess over a project with such high odds, especially when there was a chance she would survive anyway. He knew that he was probably worrying his mother, who thought he was working on a project for school, a plausible excuse... Except that he had never been so troubled, so last-minute or so frantic over any assignment.

In a way he knew what he was doing was similar to the frantic search he had made to find a cure for his own mother when she had been dying. And he knew that now he was doing it first and foremost for Hiei, and for Botan.

The half-Koorime would never survive the guilt.

Keiko moved with determination. _Botan will live._ She spun through her day, a force of nature, moving as if she knew what was going to happen minutes before the event. _She will be fine. Perfectly fine._ She bent her will to every task she was faced with, executing it exactly before moving on to the next, not a single unnecessary movement in her graceful and utterly utilitarian dance. _Botan **must **live. She will _live

Koenma stared at the typical stack of papers on his desk; even if he did exaggerate about his work load, there **was** a lot of work to do to keep Reikai running.

Still, today he couldn't find the drive to get going. No matter how much he complained, he always got the job done. Or at least, he had. Except for today. Even though he knew that there would be souls left drifting and multiple problems growing exponentially worse for each minute he procrastinated, he couldn't find it within himself to actually buckle down and do it.

This was... stupid. Letting the spirit world fall apart just because Botan was hurt. It wouldn't help anything. And it wasn't like she really had any essential duties that couldn't be taken over by someone else, except for maybe helping out the Spirit Detectives—not that they would work right now. Yusuke was probably sulking, Kuwabara would be worried to distraction, Kurama... Who knew what Kurama would do. And Hiei. Hiei was still watching over Botan, just as helpless as Koenma was.

He couldn't help a small flair of irrational anger at the half-koorime. Even though he knew it was pointless, even though he knew that Hiei couldn't help it, even though he knew it was wrong and felt guilty about the anger. It was the thought that it was the antithesis of what Botan herself would think that was keeping that anger from growing.

That only fed the guilt.

He stared at the continually-growing pile of paper in front of him. Some day he really should make sure it wasn't some sort of wood pulp-based life form. Some days it certainly felt like it.

He really should get to work.

Koenma knew he was holding vigil for Botan as much as Hiei was.

Another day had passed. Hiei had only left Botan's bedside once, to see to his needs. The room Botan rested in was surrounded in a bubble of heavy, ominous silence, sensed and respected by everyone who walked past. The sounds of two people breathing was the only sounds, though the occasional interruptions of a hurried, nervous nurse as she bustled around, trying to get done (and away from that **demon**!) as soon as possible.

Hiei's breathing was the quiet noise of someone who had spent most of his life trying to avoid detection by any number of people. Botan's breath was the shallow noise of someone fast asleep, beyond even dreams. Both were quieter than a "normal" person's breath would be.

The silence was oppressive.

Even for Hiei, who was as silent as the grave, the quiet was too much. It was almost as if some huge creature waited around him, breath bated, planning for the best moment to strike.

Sometimes it's just too much.

"I never heard you complain, not about anything serious," began Hiei. "I..." His speech, even though it was barely above a whisper, was startlingly loud in the nearly sacred hush enveloping the room.

"I respected you for it. I know what it is to keep your silence... Even though I never had anyone to confide in. And that was our difference." He wasn't even sure what he was saying, he just knew he needed to get it said.

"You had people there for you. There was no one I trusted, no one I would let see that side of me, the side that felt..." He couldn't quite bring himself to say 'scared.' "... worried. Never directly. But I knew you had people you could talk to. Anyone you knew, I knew they would let you unburden whatever you had to say into them. No one would hate you for it, no one would look down on you for it. No one would...laugh. I don't think...even I...could...have..." His words trailed off, voice dissipating into silence.

A minute later he begins again, the quiet drawing the words out of him. "That you would have people to talk to, and still keep your silence, took a strength... I don't think I could have, if I had someone to... confide in.

"But then I wondered, Why? What was keeping you from talking to any of the people who were willing to listen? And it was easy to say that you were just a stupid ferry girl without any problems to speak of and let it rest at that. And once I caught you crying... You never knew I was there.

"I never thought about it. I refused to. Because you were happy—you acted that way—and I decided you were strong. You were, you know. Weak onna though you were, you were strong. I almost imagined I hated you for it. Always I... Respected you.

"Some part of me never stopped wondering. What kept you from going to Kurama, Genkai, Koenma, Yukina, Yusuke, Keiko, some other ferry girl, even Kuwabara, and confessing whatever it was that was hurting you?

"I never could confess to any weakness. What was making you do the same things I had done? The same things I still do...

"Even though I'm talking to you now. With no response, and no hope that you hear me."

His breathing was steady, and it steadied his nerves against the uneven counterpoint of his words.

"What I have is more than you would have wished for if you had come to me, looking for someone to listen. And... maybe... it's more than I would have given.

"No matter how much respect I felt, I never showed a weakness, even if it hurt."

**A/N**: This story will be pretty much entirely in this vein until chapter eight (tentatively.) I understand that some people don't like stories like that; that's fine, but I'm not changing it. I like psychology-based stories. This may seem repetitive, but I **do** like to think that there's some character development happening here...

**No shout-outs due to ban. This time around I'll try for (legal) review responses!**


	4. Need

This chapter is short. Most chapters from here on out will be short, because they are all emotionally laden. They're draining to write and, I hope, draining to read, so a long chapter would not be a good thing. Plus, it means weeks instead of months between updates.

...not that it **will** be weeks. It will probably still be a matter of months. I am getting better, but I am not there yet.

"We need you."

The statement was surprising, abrupt, startlingly unexpected.

The darkened room was unchanged; the door remained closed, Botan remained comatose and Hiei remained a mostly-silent specter of guilt.

All of the nurses knew he was there, and each hurried just a little bit more, lingered just a little bit less, because of it.

None of them approved. Gossip ran rampant through all Reikai. The combined authority and threats of Koenma, Yusuke, Genkai, Kuwabara, Kurama and most especially Hiei was not enough to halt the insidious tide of rumors and half-truths, all cobbled together.

If anyone had been in the room they would have been surprised that Hiei had spoken. Very few, if any, would have expected that silence would draw words out of the demon.

"Kurama, Yusuke, Kuwabara, Koenma... They're all falling apart without you."

He paused reflectively.

"I expect everyone else you know is as well.

"You worm your way into everyone's life. Even though I--" He hesitated at 'hated,' changed his mind. "Even though we never got along, you were a part of who I was. I would yell at you, insult you, threaten you, and we would...affect each other.

"You gave us hope. You gave us... Optimism, unwavering belief, when we didn't have any and thought we didn't need any.

"You gave us more than you know. Just your presence, I think, was worth more than you ever guessed at...

"And now we're forced to realize.

"I don't think anyone is functioning. Not even the day-to-day...

"...seems to be getting done."

The silence drew on, empty and demanding, for a subjective eternity longer.

"I wish you knew how much we all need you."

To Hiei, it felt as if silence curled up and fell into restful sleep, sated at his confession. There would be other conversations.

"Hey," said Yusuke as Keiko sat down beside him.

They were on the roof, which had happened before, but this time was different. This time, Yusuke wasn't just escaping class and annoying teachers. This time, Keiko couldn't blame him.

She was there for the same reasons he was.

"Hello," she said, voice as subdued as his had been, for all his contrived casualness.

They sat quietly for a few minutes, the sky heavy above them. The day was sunny and warm, a blue eternity overhead.

Botan's hair wasn't that shade of blue, but it was comparable.

"It's weird, huh?" said Yusuke finally.

"She has to be okay!" blurted Keiko in response, before blushing and turning away.

"I know," sighed Yusuke. "I know."

Even now that it happened, it was hard to imagine that Botan wouldn't pop out of somewhere, a new assignment or gadget in hand.

The fragile body, unnervingly silent and deathly still, arranged on white sheets in an stiffly unnatural position didn't quite match up with the bubbly girl they knew.

It wasn't so much as if it hadn't happened, but that it seemed as if it had happened to two different people.

But it had, and it was Botan who was affected. They both had to realize that. Slowly, they had begun to.

The two sat like that for a while.

"She has to live..." whispered Keiko. "She has to..."

Kurama knew he shouldn't be missing school, if only because of his mother--the grades themselves, the teachers and the other students, he couldn't care less about.

But he also knew that Hiei needed him. It was why he was currently not, in fact, in school, and instead going to meet with Hiei, who was currently unaware of that fact.

He also knew he would take that fact to his grave. Hiei would not react well to hearing that said out loud, and he knew he would feel the same, were the situation reversed.

That didn't change the matter.

Kurama's feet had memorized the hallways to take to Botan's room and he maneouvered expertly through the maze of corridors that was Reikai.

_The dead-ends, loops, circular hallways, conjunctions and sudden turns make you realize that it grew up slowly, with no rhyme or reason, _he thought idly. _The entire complex seems almost alive... A sleeping creature created over time by its inhabitants, having only a sleepy disinterest in them._

The idea was both fascinating and disturbing.

He found himself outside Botan's room and entered with a sigh.

"Hiei?" he called out, voice soft.

"Hn. Fox." he received by way of response.

"How is she doing?"

Hiei wasn't going to bother wasting his breath on a rhetorical question.

"How are **you** doing?"

"...hn."

Kurama gave him a _look _clearly stating what he thought of his response.

Hiei remained stubbornly silent, still half-shrouded in darkness.

"Hiei, look. I'm going to be blunt, because I'm just... exhausted.

"I'm worried about you. I know what I would be like, if it was me, and I would need the support, even if I didn't admit it. You'd help me, too, denying it all the while, so just think of it as me returning the favor."

Hiei finally turned to look at him, red eyes glinting in the darkness, the curve of his head barely visible in the dim lighting, and Kurama had to squelch an inappropriate bubble of amusement at what the nurses must think of him and the situation. Hiei had never been a warm, fuzzy person, or even companionable, as Kurama was.

That aside, Kurama could see the guilt clearly on Hiei's face, and the strain the past days had caused.

"This is hard enough as it is," said Kurama finally, as the silence wore on. "You should know that. I don't need this on top of everything else, and you need it even less."

"..I don't know." said Hiei. "I... don't know how I'm doing. Kurama, I don't know how I'm going to _manage_ if she doesn't make it.

"I don't think I can take that much guilt."

"I know nothing I can say will change your mind, so I won't remind you again that it isn't your fault."

"It wasn't **your **weapon that caused the damage," said Hiei, leveling his glare at Kurama.

"I know," he sighed, dropping into the plain wood chair that had been left for visitors. "I know, no matter how much I wish it wasn't the case."

**A/N**: Heavy stuph, huh?

For anyone who's confused, at the ending of the opening section, the part that goes "the silence curled up and fell into restful sleep, sated at his confession," the "silence" is a manifestation of his guilt. It's his subconscious dealing with all his baggage, and it makes him feel like he needs to speak, to rationalize and make excuses for himself. It's not actually the silence itself... That would just be a bit weird.


	5. Fear

**Accidents and Aftermath**

**Chapter Five: Fear**

**By Dreaming of Everything**

**Disclaimer:** Yu Yu Hakusho is not mine.

**A/N:** And here it is! Miserably late, ridiculously short and really heavy (this is the most emotionally draining story for me to write, at the moment) but still here! Which counts for something, at least.

Thank you to everyone who's sticking with me through this whole big ordeal!

"I've always... Been afraid." It was a hard admission to make for Hiei, even sitting all alone as he was, with only Botan's cold silence as an audience. "I've never told anyone; it's only now that I can see it in myself.

"I never let myself grow close to anyone, though in the past few years I've failed at that, unknowingly at first, at least. I think...

"I think it was because I was afraid no one would want to be near me. If I opened myself up, people would turn away. They were perfectly willing to be business partners with a 'moody, temperamental fire demon,' as you have said in the past, as long as I could get the jobs done, but anything more? A ridiculous idea. Beyond stupidity...

"And so I didn't let myself admit that I wanted it. Total and complete denial worked for at least a while. It got harder after I was forced into being a spirit detective.

"My birth was the defining moment, you could say. It labeled me forbidden, and nobody's loved me since. I wonder what my mother thought as she carried me to term, the abomination she birthed into the world? I wonder what she would think if she knew what I've done in the years since? I have done nothing to be proud of, and a lot that is considered horrible even by other demons' standards.

"That is at least partly why I never told Yukina who I was. She put up with me while I was just the most unpleasant of the group that hung around the temple, but as her brother? I couldn't take her rejection and so I never told her. It would be easier for her, as well. She could imagine a brother that was worth something and her heart wouldn't be broken. It would only be for the best if she never found out who I was.

"And now I might have killed you. It's funny how things never change. I'm still hurting, still destroying... Even when I don't mean to. I wasn't aware of what I was doing, but it was still me who did it. Unforgivable. Everyone else is falling apart because of it, Botan, not because of you but because of what I _did_ to you...

"And you? You had already feared me. I hurt you, physically and emotionally, because I was afraid, and afraid to admit it. What will you think if I live? Will you even stand to be around me? You used to argue with me, even though when it went too far I could see genuine fear on your face. Will you still doing it, knowing not only that I'm quite capable of killing you but that I've already nearly done so in the past? You're a forgiving person, Botan, but you're not stupid. I'm not asking for miracles, I... know better, by now.

"If you live—" and the admission that she might not hurt, "—you will never look at me without fear again, assuming you ever have to.

"Whether or not I'm punished for my crime, I don't think I could ever face you again, if... **once **you awake. I'm still afraid, and I think that maybe one more person turning away would break me.

"Even the forbidden can only take so much."

A polite cough made Koenma look up from the piles of paper he was attempting to concentrate on.

"Yes?" he asked, eyes blearily focusing on the doctor in front of him. As his mind registered that fact he snapped to attention.

"Is it something about Botan?" His tone of voice was horrified, fearful and hopeful all at once.

"Yes," said the doctor, voice somber. "It is. We've all been working our hardest to come up with a cure, or at least a way to help, but we've found nothing so far. The results of some tests have come back, though, and we know considerably more about her condition..."

Koenma's rapt attention, frighteningly intense, was encouragement enough for the doctor, wordlessly urging him to continue.

"If... She has a week. If she doesn't wake up within that period of time, her natural healing ability will be exhausted, forced to stop, and her body will become totally unable to fight of the poison; she will die."

Koenma drew in a long, hissing breath, otherwise not reacting. The doctor let his gaze drop to the floor, guilty, ashamed and helpless in the face of such grief.

"I will inform the others myself," said Koenma. His face was still frozen, eyes staring blankly at the paper carpeting his desk.

Keiko was sobbing quietly, the only sound in the silent room.

She was not alone. Yusuke was holding her, doing his best to be comforting, and a single tear had fallen, streaking his cheek. Yukina was sitting stiff-backed, tear gems slipping down her face, pooling in her lap. Genkai merely looked stern and disapproving, though a suspicious dampness shone in her eyes. Kurama had retreated behind a mask; Koenma was still frozen, not knowing how to react. Kuwabara was torn between anger and sorrow, fists clenched and expression furious, tears rolling down his cheeks.

It was harder, this time, facing the truth; it had had time to sink in, the shock had begun to wear off, and it hurt more.

Hiei sat alone in the corner, the only difference in his habits since Botan had gone into her coma the fact that she wasn't in the room.

They were united in their sorrow and a single over-whelming thought:

_She had to live._

It was later, though the dim, silent room hadn't changed. Hiei had left briefly for the meeting Koenma had called, unhappy with it but unable to stay away from the information the godling had about Botan's recovery; bad or good, he needed to know it.

It had been hard leaving her, and it was harder coming back. Knowing the fact that there was a very good chance he had killed her had sickened his stomach, the guilt bitter in his mouth. That he had done **that**, and he would be allowed to see her, let alone again, to sit next to her--he was the wolf in sheep's clothing who had knowingly been invited back into the herd.

Still, it had been--was--harder to stay away.

"A week. A week before we know whether you will live or not.

"I've never been so... worried." The word tasted of fear in his mouth. "I've only cared for a few people over the years. That you would end up being one... I never would have guessed it. I hated you for a long time, and told myself I hated you for longer. You've always been an annoyance, and I hadn't realized that I had relied on that...

"I don't know what I'll do with myself if you die. How I'll live, how I'll deal with the guilt. I don't know how I'll manage around the rest--Kurama, Yusuke, Kuwabara, Yukina, even Genkai, the few people who were ever more than mild annoyances--when they all know what I have done.

"And still, for all that, I'm most afraid for you. I'm afraid that you'll never laugh again, never smile, never move. That you'll never know how much everyone needs you, that you'll never achieve your dreams, that you'll never find someone to...love. Someone who makes you believe in yourself.

"I worry that I've destroyed everything for you... I'm sorry, Botan.

"I'm so, so sorry..."

**A/N:** Hah! I did it!

Geh. Shortest chapter yet. I feel like I'm short-changing you all...

Thank-you to everyone who read, and especially everyone who reviewed!


	6. Understanding

**Accidents and Aftermath  
****Chapter Six: Understanding  
****  
****By Dreaming of Everything**

**Disclaimer:** I do not own any characters from Yu Yu Hakusho. The rest of the content featured in this story is by me; please don't take without crediting.

**Author's Notes:** I find myself inordinately fond of this chapter. I think it turned out remarkably well. Finally!

I am experimenting with new line breaks, as QuickEdit has eaten my old ones. Opinions?

oOoOoOo

Hiei was slightly surprised when the door swung open at a time when none of the nurses were scheduled to visit. He had heard the footsteps, of course, but he hadn't recognized them as ones that could belong to any of the spirit detectives; they were too quiet, too soft; the person didn't weigh enough to be any of them.

He recognized the girl as Urameshi's woman, the one he had taken hostage when Yusuke had first fought him. She apparently didn't see him, had no idea he was there--clearly nobody had told her he had taken to haunting the room. Admittedly, he wasn't particularly obviously placed, but she was clearly no fighter. He watched silently, not wanting to deal with the girl, especially considering that, the first time he had met her, he had kidnapped her and tried to forcefully open a copy of his Jagan in her. Humans made such complicated deals out of those sorts of things.

"Oh, Botan..." she whispered, her voice cracking slightly as tears gathered in her eyes. Hiei vaguely remembered her earlier, when they had been told the news. A week to live, a week before they would know, permanently, whether she would live or die.

"We've just fallen apart without you. I can't seem to stop crying, I just don't know what to say to my parents. Yusuke's beating himself up over it, I've never seen him this torn up, I have no idea what's going to happen—you just can't die!"

She was silent for a few minutes, except for loud sniffling as she tried to keep her tears under control.

"I'm sorry—you always hated crying. N-Never could stand to see anyone depressed." At that, she finally broke down sobbing, overwhelmed.

Hiei could just barely catch her words, strangled as they were by her sobs and muffled by the hands she was covering her face with.

"It's just not fair, you always hated seeing us sad or depressed and now we all are, and it's because of you, it's not fair to you, it's not fair to us, but I can't help it, if you were here you'd make us all cheer up."

Her tears and babbling began to slow, trailing off.

"If you were here, we wouldn't be sad in the first place."

She sat for another few long minutes before leaving Hiei alone once more, with the irony of her words—_if you were here you'd make us all cheer up—you always hated seeing us sad or depressed—now we all are_.

oOoOoOo

Yusuke entered a while after Keiko left. He was, apparently, aware of the fact that Hiei was definitely in the room.

"Hey, Hiei! Listen—it just can't be healthy for you to stick around haunting Botan's room like some creepy grumpy overgrown bat with three eyes. Plus she's going to freak i—**_when_** she wakes up."

Shaken by the slip of his tongue, Yusuke was silent for a few minutes. Hiei made no move to respond.

"Seriously. Don't beat yourself up over it—we're all damn sure that it's not your fault. Sure, you're a moody, temperamental bastard most of the time, but we all trust you. Yeah… _Damn_ this is awkward."

Hiei gave a small snort of agreement at that last comment, at least. Yusuke was not custom-made for uplifting and inspirational speeches, particularly not when it came to things like emotions.

"Yeah, whatever. I can kick your ass halfway to next Sunday."

"You're imagining things, Urameshi."

"Hah! I did it before, I can do it again. No-one beats the mighty Yusuke Urameshi!"

Hiei remained pointedly silent.

"Shut up! …Damn! Stop being quiet so **loudly**!"

oOoOoOo

"I…"

The word fell flat. Hiei wasn't even sure what he had meant to say. The oppressing silence and overwhelming pressure of _guilt-worry-envy-fear-sorrow-understanding_ was nearly hypnotizing, pushing him into the glassy-eyed, unthinking, nearly meditative state that drew words from him, water to a sponge.

"…I think I… Understand.

"At least, I am beginning to.

"I always wondered what everyone else saw in you, what redeeming values you had beyond grating vapidity and ill-advised optimism.

"I think though… That that… Is what I was missing. There were no 'potential qualities that could count as marginally helpful' because I couldn't see them for what they were worth.

"You were a voice of hope even when it was hopeless, even if nobody believed it; the reassurance always managed to worm its way in somehow. You were strong when you needed to be, even though you were always weak. You cared, deeply, about as all… except for, maybe, me, but that's to be expected. It is what I **deserve**, the least of what my punishment should be, after what I have done. That girl of Yusuke's was never as hurt by my kidnapping as she was by me hurting _you_. That, at least, had a chance of recovery…

"Not that I… Care about her. She is a weak human, when all is said and done, worse than you ever were, but Yusuke sees something in her. I don't think I understand it…

"But I never saw anything in you until it was too late. It had nothing to do with the… _incident,_ but it looks like I stole away my own second chance.

"I am beginning to understand, but I don't think I understand much of anything, really…"

**A/N:** Thank you very much to all my readers and reviewers! You brighten up my life, seriously.

Please take the time to review if you liked it enough to read! It's common courtesy. Constructive criticism is the light of my life, and always hugely appreciated, but feedback of any sort is great.

Another short chapter, sadly, but I rather like it, otherwise… I think we may just be stuck with short chapters for at least a bit more, I'm afraid. Seriously, I think this is the shortest chapter I have ever written for any story, ever. Minus drabbles.


	7. Love

**Accidents and Aftermath  
Chapter Two: Love**

By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho and any of the characters involved with it. Likewise, I do not own the quotes used in this chapter; the first one is by Robert A. Johnson, and the second from the bible.

**Author's Notes:** Anybody want to beta for me?

Sorry it took so long to get this chapter out! I am a bad, bad writer sometimes. Sorry for the wait, and I hope it was worth it!

I love it when people contact me/reply to my review responses—no matter how long it takes for me to get them out!

A string of O's like this—oOoOoOo—is officially my scene break now. Ff(dot)net was eating my old ones… I realized that nothing was sacred after they banned two pieces of punctuation tied together.

oOoOoOo

"Curiously, people resist the noble aspects of their shadows more strenuously than they hide their dark sides. It is more disrupting to find out that you have a profound nobility of character than to find out that you are a bum."

--Robert A. Johnson

oOoOoOo

Hiei hadn't been incredibly silent, but he had never been open and talkative, either. He had the feeling that this was the most he had spoken in… A long time. The silence seemed to draw the words out of him without even conscious thought, as if it was some magnetic force pulling at him and his voice.

He had certainly never spoken so deeply, so openly, so _painfully_. He was not sure he was enjoying the experience.

And he hated the circumstances that had caused it, maybe that most of all. The demons who had started it, and himself for finishing it, and Botan, in a heart-wrenching, painful, impersonal and guilty way, for being the one it had happened to, for affecting everyone it had.

Yukina, Yusuke, Kurama, Kuwabara, Genkai, even Koenma: they were his world, the only ones he interacted with. The sum and total of his family, friends, acquaintances and peers. Nobody has made him feel like Botan has, though, now that this has happened.

No one has caused that cocktail of mixed, conflicting, uncontrolled emotions the way she has managed by doing nothing. The guilt, envy, caring, worry, respect, hate, fear, understanding, need…Nobody has made him feel like Botan has. Maybe not feel as badly as Botan has, but it is calming to look into her face when he can push aside—though not forget—that she is dancing with her second death and **it is his fault** and he understands her better now, and what used to irk him about her doesn't bother him as much anymore, now that that's changing.

And now that there's a chance that she will die, that she will be gone forever, he can't imagine life without her. And it's not just because of the impact it would have on the rest of his… _friends_, his co-workers, it would affect him as well, as much as he is reluctant to admit that.

It's not even that he would feel guilt forced on him by the people who were mourning her. It wasn't even that he would feel guilt for his own sake.

He would miss her. He wasn't sure why, but he would miss her, and her irritating, unhelpful, over-all useless presence.

Somehow, though, it's more than that.

It wasn't that he would miss her—although he would—but that he couldn't imagine life without her. It was like suddenly finding out that your world didn't evolve around the sun you thought it did—that it was being pulled and directed and was centered around something else entirely.

Like Botan.

And he couldn't hate her for that revelation. Couldn't hate her for interrupting his not-really-peaceful world, couldn't blame her for (_being there)_ for what he had done. It is somehow frightening, to suddenly shoulder responsibility that way, not because he wants to or even because he has to but because there is no option but to.

The past few days, the past week and then some, he has told her more than he has ever told anyone else, including himself. He thinks that, if he could have listened to himself, he would have learned a lot. Kurama had once told him that nobody ever knows himself, and Hiei has only now begun to understand that.

_I would _miss_ her. I would… Regret not having her there._

"It's…

"The guilt is only part of it. I've come to… Like having you around. Tolerate it. Or maybe more than that…

"It's not that I can't imagine you not being there, but that it makes me feel—lonely.

"I'm not sure I can imagine _me_ without you. And I've always been alone before, completely independent.

"…But I'm not alone anymore. There's Kurama, Yukina, even though she doesn't know." His voice was grudging. "Yusuke. Kuwabara.

"Botan…

"Or she was. She was there for me, maybe even considered me her friend, at least her coworker, even though I did my best to change that… And even though she won't be, if she wakes up. If she ever wakes up…

"Even Botan has her limits. Sending her spiraling into a second death, to the point where it nearly cost her her life, would shatter even her limits.

"And that… Hurts. Though it shouldn't. I did my best to accomplish that on my own, before.

"But before was a long time ago, wasn't it? It seems like nothing is the same now. Not her, myself, anyone else. Even what's important. No missions at all since this has happened—even Koenma's rearranged his priorities.

"The world held it's breath when you were hurt, and it hasn't let it out yet.

"What happens when you die?

"I suppose we'll have to move on. Yusuke has that weak human girl, Kuwabara his sister. Koenma will bury himself in work. Kurama—he'll manage. He's no doubt dealt with worse before, and he has his pathetic human 'parent' for comfort. Yukina has Genkai and the other spirit detectives looking out for her—and me, though… I can't comfort her. I wouldn't know how.

"And I—I'll—just move on…"

But he couldn't. And he knew that. Knew that he wouldn't know what to do. Knew that he wouldn't be able to face the rest of the Tantei, face himself, face the full force of the half-there guilt that was already stalking him, face the uncertainty. Face his humanity. (1)

Somehow, all of this and more had started hinging on Botan's death. His life had centered around hers, impossibly and implacably. Was it because it was his fault? Because he had watched over her? Was it her expression—sudden, shocked, horrified, disbelieving, _hurt_—when his sword plunged into her? Was it just her, and her personality, and her belief, her trust?

He wasn't sure. It had happened nonetheless.

He cared. He cared more than he knew, more than he could give voice to. About her and about what he had done to her, about how that _damn_ night had changed the course of their lives.

And he hated that, somewhat. What it had done to him, to his independence, to the others, to her, to everyone. He hated not knowing. But the caring was stronger, and the guilt and the confusion—

For once, he was feeling something he couldn't easily identify, or just as easily dismiss, explain away.

His thoughts quieted, and the silence grew thicker, heavy, accusing.

It's frightening, suddenly not knowing. It had all the horror of being alone and unsure in the dark, with no one there—but that had never frightened him, not like this had. Hadn't done this to him.

What feels like a painful eternity passes before the word he is looking for to describe the tangled bundle of emotions he is feeling finally occurs to him.

"Love," he says quietly to the room, and his voice is tinged with wonder.

oOoOoOo

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become as a sounding brass or a clanging gong. And if I have the gift of prophecy and know all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."

--1 Corinthians 13:1-2

oOoOoOo

(1) I have said it before and I'll say it again—in some ways, the English language sucks. More specifically, there is no good synonym for 'humanity' that doesn't have the emphasis on being human.

**A/N**: And done. Still dark. Much more negative than I wanted it to be, actually. But things will be changing as of next chapter! Events will start happening. .:is evil:.

We're now officially over the half-way mark—this story's still planned out at 12 chapters. And no, not going to be abandoned unless something goes **seriously** wrong. I hope I haven't scared all my TRULY WONDERFUL REVIEWERS away with my hideously bad update schedule…

As things are, I make a point to respond to all my reviews using the handy review reply function. If nobody responds to that, I just might end up quitting. Does anyone care either way? Anyone at all? (To people who have responded: Thanks! My eternal gratitude! You're all great people and I'm loving getting to know you!)

Finally, before my author's notes eat the rest of the chapter: the fifth and, if there is one, tenth reviewer for this chapter have the opportunity to request a drabble for whatever they want from me. Any series I'm familiar with, any characters, any pairing if they so desire, any theme—anything goes!


	8. Waiting

**Accidents and Aftermath**  
**Chapter Eight: Waiting**  
By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho or any of the characters, events or worlds portrayed in it.

**Author's Notes**: This chapter brought to you by NaNoWriMo. (That's National Novel Writing Month, for the record. 50,000 words in November. I'm just going for 30,000 words for all my projects over-all, quite frankly, but I've been very busy.)

As always, please read and review!

oOoOoOo

It was a Sunday. No school. Keiko was grateful for that, at least.

She had gathered in the park with a few friends, some of the students Botan had begun to know; Yusuke had arrived sometime later. They were all silent, remembering, praying or half-praying, solemn.

They had all been told that she had been in a car accident and might not pull through, of course, because _'she was killed by a demon'_ couldn't be said.

And it hurt to say that, to think that. Because of the 'killed,' because of the word itself and because of the past tense, and maybe because it wasn't telling the whole story: _'they had both been poisoned because she was a ferry girl who sometimes had a solid body and he was a demon with an implanted third eye and the poison drove him crazy and now the poison has been flushed from his body he sits watch over her because he blames it all on himself and that hurts him, now, because he's changed from when he kidnapped me and tried to turn me into a demon lacking any free will of my own, all to fight Yusuke who was keeping him from taking over the human world but his years of community service fighting alongside an old teammate and the human he tried to kill have changed him and I don't know how much, but enough that Botan's death would kill him, now, or damage him so that he reverts to—I don't know what, whether he would retreat inside himself or lose all the humanity that rubbed off on him or turn all that sorrow into himself or become defensive, build up even-more impenetrable walls because it hurts too much to care and he thinks it was his fault—'_

And it all hinged on today.

oOoOoOo

Life moved on and held its breath simultaneously.

Koenma woodenly moved through his work, because there was nothing else for him to do, and it needed doing. He couldn't put it off forever. There was nothing else to do, anyways, even though it felt dishonorable, insulting to Botan's memory, to do it _now_, _today_, when there was so little time left.

He was a god, for all the good it did him, and he couldn't change this _little_ thing. He had given Yusuke a second chance, lobbied to get Kurama a lighter sentence, had his hand involved in Hiei's sentence—it could have been much worse; the death penalty hadn't been unfeasible—and seen that Botan had been assigned as Yusuke's assistant. That may have been her death warrant. The most innocent of them all, the one who deserved her potential sentence least, and the one he had no power over.

Nothing to do but wait.

oOoOoOo

_It was funny_, thought the person who ran the small store Botan usually did her shopping at. _I haven't seen her for a while now. How long has it been? Ten days, a week? I wonder how she's doing..._

oOoOoOo

The other ferry girls were either frantic or frozen, manic or utterly, painfully still.

They were already dead, so there was no need to worry about one of their ranks dying. At least, there hadn't been. They hadn't thought, hadn't known, that the spirit itself could be compromised that way, that it could "die" again, passing into oblivion, nothingness, instead of being processed into the spirit world, allocated to the spot their lives had destined them to go.

And so all of them were panicked but showing it in different ways.

Everyone had liked Botan, too. They were a close-knit group after the centuries they had spent, and the things they faced in their duties forced them closer together, giving them an understanding ear and a shoulder to lean on, no matter what.

Botan had been (_is_) one of the cheeriest of them, though, refusing to give up or falter, striding through the deaths they dealt with, the suicides, the murders, the gory accidents, the people who died with nobody there to care for them—they saw a lot, and she had strode through it all with compassion, kindness and a smile, giving what she could give. She had been ecstatic to be assigned as Yusuke's assistant, and everyone had teased her about having a crush on him until she had blushed.

Nobody had expected her to die doing it. Nobody had known she could die at all.

They faced death every day, but somehow this was worse, and knowing how little time they had was worse still; a day, and they would know, but not until then. A day until the healing powers that kept them all safe, made them such a force to be reckoned with, would slowly kill her, draining her body until it could no longer recover from it, as the poison still slowly ate away at her.

oOoOoOo

Kuwabara believed in things that were right, and things going right, and fighting until you win, which would have to be enough and had been, in the past.

And now it wasn't. Wasn't enough.

They didn't know if she'd die or not. Trying might not work this time.

oOoOoOo

As a doctor, she hoped all her patients lived. As a person, she hoped a little bit more in this case.

She had been a woman on the far end of middle-aged when she had died, leaving five grown children: two sons and three daughters. She had raised them right, balancing between indulgence and excess severity, supporting them and caring for them and finally letting them go. She had seen it as a good sign that her children had been able to let her go and move on, once she had died.

In the Spirit World she had become one of the official doctors, a position she didn't see much need for, but she liked the work regardless. They took care of the not-dead people of Reikai, and she liked the nurses working underneath her. She was the person people came to when they needed to talk, or sit and be quiet, or cry, or laugh for no reason. She mothered them all, now, because everyone needs a mother every now and then, and the ferry girls especially did things no one should have to do.

Everyone needed a mother now and then, for example. That demon that wouldn't leave Botan's room, for example, looking more and more lost and young every time she entered and desperate, frantic, to start with.

She didn't think he'd appreciate it, though, no matter how much he needed it, when he was having such trouble just dealing with coming to terms with the fact that he liked the girl he had nearly killed. The fact that he had nearly killed her at all. She heard the gossip, knew at least a bit about his past, but she knew all about moving beyond bad pasts. She was in the medical profession, after all.

Every time she entered the room she had to resist the urge to wrap him in his arms and whisper, fiercely, that it was _going to be okay_, even if that might end up being a lie. It needed doing anyway, and she wondered what sort of mother he had had. Clearly, not a very good one. Or father, for that matter.

She hoped, for everyone's sake, that Botan would wake up and things would go smoothly afterwards, for the sake of them all, but especially the demon who watched over her, reminding her slightly and inexplicably and her moodiest son during his teenage years, when his propensity to angst was nearly overwhelming.

oOoOoOo

The person who lived above them—Botan, Boton, something like that?—had been quiet recently. He missed it, slightly—it had been nice, hearing her prance around and trip over furniture and drop pots and laugh too loudly. He was old now, and his wife around the same age; they had never had children, and he regretted that now, a little, and she had made it a little bit more bearable. It was a reminder that the world could be younger than they were, brighter, and as full of promise as it had been when he had been that age.

He hoped she hadn't moved. Maybe she was just on vacation—that was reasonable. He hoped that everything was okay.

oOoOoOo

A day. He had lived centuries. He would survive this.

Hiei tried to ask himself if it really matter in the end, but he knew the answer.

Yes. It would matter.

oOoOoOo

_Everything was quiet._

_She had always been aware of the pain, but she only focused on it now, instead of letting it fade into the background, more pointless distractions, like the buzz of words around her. If she concentrated, she would end up docked, no longer allowed to drift in oblivion; it was so _nice_, to be wrapped in the embrace of abyssal nothingness like this._

_The interference was growing, though, the syrupy darkness that surrounded her, filled her, thinning and slowly fading away. The white noise that had filled her ears was turning into recognizable sound: the murmur of her lungs and heart, the shift of the bed beneath her as it slowly settled, the sounds of footsteps in the hallway beyond her, a half-heard conversation as they walked by._

_She could feel the pain, now she had lost the cottony-feeling distraction that had clouded her. It was nagging, unignorable._

_And her lungs, she could feel them beating again, although she knew they must have always been; now she could sense the rise and fall, the push and press of oxygen and muscle._

_There was somebody next to her. She was no longer alone, complete in herself and within herself. She wondered who it was—_

Eyes fluttered open, purple-pink-blue eyes stained with pain and distraction and exhaustion, slowly focusing as they fixed onto red ones staring intently into her face, documenting each slight movement she made, more in the past half hour than the rest of her convalescence put together. His eyes were dark with worry and fear and an impossible hope. Hiei didn't know what to do, but didn't think he could force himself to leave, so it was immaterial either way.

_She would not die._ She had woken up.

Botan blinked at him, a curious urgency prodding at her mind, eyes blanking slightly as events slid through her mind, what had happened just before, why she was here—

A sudden awareness snapped into place, horror filling eyes gone glassy, and she tried to fling herself back, shift herself away with hands that shook with just the effort it took to raise them, scream forming in her throat and nearly dying in her panic, unselfconscious horror filling every line of her body with dread, fear.

Hiei fled.

oOoOoOo

_What he deserved. It was only what he deserved._

oOoOoOo

**Author's Notes**: As promised, things happen! See? **See?** I'm so proud of myself! And more things will be happening next chapter, yep.

When I type "abyssal," I end up making these weird connections to mussels. I blame 7th grade science, the Puget Sound and my own knowledge of marine biology. (Anyone else know what byssal threads are? I get this feeling I'm alone in this...)

I hope this chapter was as tense as it was meant to be...

Please read and review!


	9. Misunderstandings

**Accidents and Aftermath**  
**Chapter Nine: Misunderstandings**  
By Dreaming of Everything  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho or any of the characters, events or settings in it.

**Author's Notes:** ¾ done! Hurrah! Things change dramatically from this chapter onward—and hopefully, with faster updates.

I know that Botan is kind of being a jerk in this chapter, but keep in mind that, mentally and physically speaking, she _has_ just undergone an incredibly traumatizing event.

Sorry this took so long. It would have been out two weeks earlier, but I lost my flash drive.

oOoOoOo

There was still the washed-out flatness of emotion he had realized was shock.

_She would live_. That was most important. Regardless that she hated him. That she feared him (_Like everyone else,_ his mind whispered) and he loved her. That didn't make up for his actions, just as the poison was no excuse because _he_ had done it and _he_ had almost cost Botan her life and _he_ was the only one, out of all of them, that had been affected like that. There was _no excuse._

The fact that he could never speak to her again, never be near her again, never see her laugh and smile and maybe try to speak to him, never get to respond to her, like he never had before, was secondary to all that. **She would live**, and he would not see her, and part of him wanted to scream or kill or cry because of that, but it was the way things would be, and maybe that was for the best. He couldn't hurt her again, at least. He wouldn't force himself on her, wouldn't force her to accept him, even his presence, after what he had done. _It was what he deserved._ More than anything else, it was what he deserved, cold-hearted, cold-blooded killer that he was. He had nearly killed her once before—

--_when she kneeled on the floor trying desperately to save the girl he had kidnapped to get to Yusuke, trying to stem the flow of his demonic power into the other girl with her white magic, and he was surprised—impressed, too, he realized later—by how much power she had, but it wasn't enough, and they both knew that it was killing her, and eventually her magic would fail and the girl would be turned into his mindless subordinate and the ferry girl would be facing a likely death from exhaustion and he had laughed at that, an inevitable result, and one he relished_—

The memories wash over him, and he's surprised by how much older he feels, now. He's lived for centuries, but the past little while has had more impact than any previous ten consecutive years, and the past week and a half or so more than anything else.

He feels ancient, crippled.

Even if they run into each other again—though he doubts that Koenma will continue to force Botan to work with him, allow him to work with Botan, after all that's happened, the most unexpected near-death in the spirit detectives—she will be afraid. She won't approach him, won't talk to him, won't try to draw him into conversation. She won't giggle about a silly mistake she's made, too busy fearing and panicking and trying to keep from bolting, no matter how useless it would be. She won't… be herself.

_He will never see her again_.

oOoOoOo

Botan's heart is still racing with the memories: _Hiei lunging at her, brain only registering what she's seen after he's moved and cut into her side, forcing her away while he lunges at Kurama—and he'd always hated her, but out of all of them, he was closest to Kurama, why was he attacking him?—and oh god the pain, overwhelming except for a curious numb spot where the sword bit into her, where Hiei cut her, and now the sudden rush of power, too hot and painful, filling her past full so she feels like she's bursting, even with the blood gushing out of her where she was cut, it should be weakening her_—

She wonders what happened, that… that… that _he_ was allowed to watch over her while she slept. That he would want to is incomprehensible, so she ignores the subject, her mind still fuzzy and fogged with sleep and painful and overfull.

She is struggling to move, move anything, any part of her, at all when Kurama comes sprinting into the room, eyes wider and looking more flustered than she's ever seen him before, she thinks.

"You're alive," he breathes, as if it's something impossible, extraordinary.

Botan tries to speak, but her voice doesn't work, painful with disuse. She ignores the arrival of a nurse at the doorway, and simply doesn't notice when she turns and leaves, presumably running to tell people.

She tries again, and finally manages, though her voice is strange and rusty to her ears: "How… Long?"

"Nearly two and a half weeks," says Kurama calmly; he's managed to compose himself, slightly, from—whatever it was about her that had shaken his composure earlier.

Botan would have gasped, but her lungs can't manage it, not quite. It's merely a slightly deeper rasping breath.

"What happened…?"

"Gaseous, airborne poison. It gave you a nearly uncontrollable burst of power, then weakened you greatly; it awoke an—uncontrollable bloodlust in Hiei. He lost touch with himself. He attacked you in his attempt to get to the nearest strong opponent—me—before collapsing. You brought us back to Reikai before collapsing into a coma as well, badly injured and still poisoned.

"We couldn't help you, because it would affect your own healing ability, which was doing barely any good; it was what the poison in your system was targeting. We could heal Hiei quite easily, and he recovered quickly.

"He's spent those past two and a half weeks watching over you."

"Why?" said Botan, her voice beginning to even up, though it was still harsh with sleep.

"Because you're his fri—" Kurama paused on the word, not knowing what described the demon's views of the girl. Knowing that he would never—had never—described any of them as a friend, Botan least of all. He had always held her in the lowest regard… "Because he feels responsible."

Botan shivered; she was horror-struck by the idea of him watching over her, watching her sleeping—

_She always thought that people showed their truest selves when they were sleeping, losing whatever masks and walls they had built up for the day, showing only their purest self; and Hiei had seen her like that, relaxed and peaceful and dreaming, undefensive, out of control, when she was at her most vulnerable, even after what he had done. It left her feeling violated, someone seeing her like that, after what he had done…_

_And it wasn't just the attack, which she couldn't believe was just the poison. It had affected her own personality so differently, her own actions and motives… It was all the harsh comments and refusals and rebuttals that had made it so painfully obvious what she was to him, and it was also their first meeting, when he had tried to take over Keiko's self-control to kill Yusuke so he could rule over Ningenkai, and nothing much had changed since then._

_She had begun to trust him, after all this time, what with his devotion to the rest of the Reikai Tantei, if not to her—but it wasn't devotion, wasn't anything real, she had been wrong about that, clearly, it was all an act, _it had to have been an act_ and it couldn't have been real. And they all should have known better—_

She can't get the image of Hiei swooping down on her, unstoppable and so so far above her, like he had always been, like he had always told her, so obvious and blatant—and all because she was in the way of greater obstacles, an actual challenge…

She doesn't want to think. Doesn't want to deal with this, doesn't want to try to understand—

Her train of thought is interrupted by Kurama pulling her into a gentle hug—_that was new, how close had she really come to dying? She hadn't realized he had cared so much_—and then stepping back, smiling his old, familiar, smile, as inscrutable as always, but maybe a little desperate, a little relieved.

He steps back as Yusuke comes dashing into the room, then Kuwabara, and the nurses and the other ferry girls and Koenma's there, too, trying to force his way through the crowd of people; and there's Genkai, with Yukina, and Keiko and the doctor—

It's cacophonous and nearly overwhelming. Botan thinks she's beginning to realize how close she came to dying. People are crying, and she's being hugged, hard and desperately, and people are hugging each other, and crying.

Botan almost wants to burst into tears herself. It was just too _much_ right now…

The doctor—Botan was too fuzzy right now to come up with her name—seemed to understand. She was forcing people out of the room, taking names and personal relationships so she could set up, apparently, a visiting schedule.

About five minutes after the room empties—and it goes quickly, the doctor is surprisingly effective—Yusuke is let in.

"Uh—good to see that you're feeling better," he says, a bit awkward. It's very Yusuke, and she can't quite repress her smile. Yusuke grins back at her.

"Are you alright?" she asks, though afterwards she's not sure why.

He paces a little. "I'm—I'm sorry," he says at last, face stricken.

Botan sighs. "It. It wasn't your fault, Yusuke. I don't blame you."

"I should have done _something_, should have realized what was happening, should have protected you—"

'_It has to be someone's fault_' remained unspoken.

"I don't blame you. It was dark, raining, we were under attack, and it really was— unexpected—"

Botan knows that now she is the one who is stricken.

"Don't blame Hiei," says Yusuke, that unexpected intuition he has showing itself for a moment.

She shivers.

Yusuke opens his mouth to continue, but there's two loud knocks at the door. His face twists into a smile. "And that's my signal to leave. You hurry up and get better, Botan!"

Koenma enters the room next, trying to look stern and mostly just looking shocked, and happy.

"Be more _careful,_ Botan!" he says, before she can even open her mouth to say anything. "I can't believe we came that close to losing you…"

"Koenma, sir," she says. "Why… Why did you allow Hiei to—watch me like that?" She's impressed by how even her voice is.

"Well…" Koenma frowns. "It wasn't his fault, and he felt guilty… He's made impressive changes to his behavior, and the rest of the Tantei weren't going to take it well, if I told him to leave."

_But he _wasn't_ innocent,_ is all that Botan can think. _He isn't..._

Koenma leaves and Kuwabara is next, and Botan thinks that it's so much _easier_ to manage this when it's just one person at a time.

"Botan!" he says, grabs her into a hug that's nearly too tight, and bursts into tears. She's bewildered, but pats him comfortingly on the back.

He recovers fairly quickly, babbles a few garbled, embarrassed half-explanations and then exits.

_How close, exactly, had she come to dying…?_

She shivers, and then winces—her whole body aches—and then Keiko is entering the room.

Her eyes are brimming with tears, too, her mouth curved into one of the most painfully relieved smiles Botan has ever seen.

"Everyone's so relieved," Keiko breathes. "It's so hard to believe, to, to fully realize… We were all so worried, Botan."

Keiko spends a few minutes going over trivialities of what had happened while she had been comatose, before there's another knock at the door.

"I'll go over and get your apartment back in order, okay?" she says, as she stands to leave.

Botan smiles deeply. She's so lucky to have so many people who care about her…

"Thank you, Keiko."

Other people come and go, and eventually she's left alone.

Botan's tired, utterly exhausted, but she doesn't want to sleep.

She's spent the past two weeks (and then some) asleep, after all. She knows it's silly, but there's a niggling fear that if she falls asleep again, she'll never wake up. And then there's Hiei, who had been _watching _her all that time, violating her privacy, after everything else he had done to her…

Still, sleep's pull on her is inexorable, and eventually she falls asleep.

_And she dreams…_


	10. Dreams

**Accidents and Aftermath  
****Chapter Ten: Dreams  
**By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho. This a fanwork made for my own amusement and won't grant me any profit.

**Author's Notes:** Ha! Another chapter, and this one's longer!

I meant to get more of my outlined material into this chapter, but this was a more natural break, and meant I didn't take as long updating. It's also about twice as long as my last few chapters, so there you go. To make up for it, I'm adding another chapter to the over-all plan, making 13 total. (Three more to go! OMG, almost there!)

This is… Basically six pages of dream sequence. Sorry! But it needed doing. Botan's got a lot to work through right now, you see...

Before you complain about the grammar in this, most of the italics is another part of Botan's consciousness cutting in; it's meant to have a disjointed, dreaming sort of affect. Tell me if it works, please!

oOoOoOo

Botan realized, vaguely, that she was asleep. She had to be, because it was the only time she ever saw her parents—the ones she had had before she had died and become a ferry girl. She never remembered what they actually looked like—or anything else about them, for that matter—when she was awake. It was part of her 'deal,' apparently, the one that let her be a ferry girl. Botan had learned to manage.

Managing. Yes. That was clearly what she was doing right now—not avoiding. Avoi—_hesitating_ around an issue was just a way of managing, right? Because she didn't _want_ to think about any of this. So it was a good thing she was sleeping. And dreaming, apparently, because she was with her parents.

Had she thought this already? She wasn't sure.

So: her parents. And this must be her past home. It was… Nice. A house and a small farm and a river running near-by—she knew it was there, even if she couldn't see or hear it, and since it was a dream, it made sense—and several cats, one with kittens, on the porch with her, and her parents.

And… Hiei? But…

This wasn't right…

She was _dreaming_…

She was in a Good Place, right? A nice place, dreaming or not? She was supposed to be _safe_ here, and she didn't want to think of Hiei, he wasn't supposed to be here, because of… because of…

_Things she didn't want to think of_

The scene changed.

oOo

It was raining, she could tell that much, but her thoughts weren't defined enough for their to be actual raindrops, or for them to affect her—she was already wet, but that wasn't from the rain; it was that river, the one that ran by the house her parents lived in. But further downstream, not where the house was… And her parents weren't here… _Nobody_ was. Except for her.

She was wet, her kimono soaked and her hair falling out of its tie, and her chest felt oddly heavy.

_Because it was full of water,_ she thought. _I'm dead_.

That's right. It had been the river. She had drowned. She was already dead, had been dead for centuries, but had been kept on as a ferry girl instead of moving on to—whatever came after death. She couldn't seem to come up with it right now, which was okay—it really didn't matter right now.

_She was dead so she couldn't be killed again, that was important…_

Dead…

_**That was important…**_

And now she was somewhere else.

The sky was an odd color, leaf-green; the color she had painted the walls in her bedroom, with her ceiling sky green. No, not green, blue… It was supposed to be blue, but like this it was like trees had formed a canopy overhead, and nobody had bothered to paint in the leaves. It was claustrophobic, that heavy green sky weighing in above her, those leaves that weren't leaves growing from nothing except maybe the ceiling and pressing above her, keeping her from the sky and the air and there was water all around her, pressing at her and filling up her lungs and that leafy sky pressing her down into the water—

--but it didn't happen like that because she died on a sword, one that cut into her, she can feel it, biting into her side and she must be dying because there's numbness and darkness and it's like there's a wave slowly enveloping her body, one with a fizzing edge and flat nothingness behind it, all emanating from the gash into her side, and there's this strange, painful power filling her up and— and—

_She's drowning_

Hiei's saying that he's _sorry_, but Botan knows that they both know that he's lying.

And she's underwater…

oOo

She's dead so she knows that death is not like this. It's Reikai and judgment and then a sentence, not this floating.

She's underwater—in the ocean. It's dark—it must be night, or she's so deep beneath the surface that the light can't penetrate at all. But maybe it's her blood, because she's bleeding: someone's cut her, deeply. Maybe it was a fish, a shark, hungry and needing something to eat, though it's not that jagged.

But she

_doesn't want to think of that now_

can't bother with trivialities like that, it's unimportant: what _is_ important is that she's dead, and this isn't what death was, what death is.

This is where her body is, she's back in it, something she hasn't felt for—_centuries_—a while, a long while, and it's drifting almost weightless down here. It's funny nothing's eaten her—except for that gash in her side—and she feels no need to breathe, and her chest is strangely quiet, and her head, with no heart beat and no hum of blood in your ears, everything crystal clear in this dark water with no light at all, although she can feel the brush of schools of tiny, almost transparent, fish against her skin. She can feel the ocean—

_breathing_

all around her, but it had tried to (_kill_) hurt her, had taken that bite out of her side and stained the water dark with her blood so the light couldn't reach her like she was buried, buried under water, that was drowning, she had drowned…

She had drowned in the river and been swept out to sea where her body had been betrayed like this, _raped_ like this, but still it had been so peaceful.

She didn't want to dream this anymore. She was dreaming, right?

oOo

"How is a raven like a writing desk?" someone asks. Botan knows what the line is from. They—the ferry girls, because she was dead—had all read the Alice books a while ago. Before she had… Died again?

"We're all quite mad here," said the Cheshire Cat, and then she was being killed by Hiei.

He cut into her side, and her blood splashed into and over the tea cups. "I've got it in my fur," said the Dormouse.

"Now I _certainly_ don't want any more," said Alice.

oOo

They were dead, and she was dead and even the people it doesn't make sense to have dead were dead. (_But she had died already…_)

Hiei wasn't laughing. No crazed declarations. Nothing _gleeful_, just grim, self-satisfied satisfaction, self-aware recognition of a job well-done and a challenge met and exceeded, another barrier lost.

There was still a sadistic edge to that smile. It was _predatory_. Assuredly uncaring. Something Botan's numbed, dead-but-dying mind couldn't describe.

She was sprawled over her mother, and covered in her blood…

Kurama, Yusuke and Kuwabara hadn't been enough to stop Hiei. Nothing had been. He had killed them in the first wave, right after her, and then the others he knew: Genkai, Keiko, even Yukina, and that meant he was beyond redemption. And then had come Koenma, a god, who should have been immortal, and then the ferry girls--already dead, like her. The nice doctor. Her neighbors. A child she saw walking to school each morning. Souls she had made a connection to, taking them to the Spirit World. Her parents.

Each one seemed carefully chosen to be as painful to her as possible, but she knew she shouldn't be so egocentric, even if it _was_ her dream. Hiei didn't care enough about her to do something like that, no matter that he had watched her as she slept.

_She didn't understand, and she wasn't fighter, and that was all he cared about, right? She was an annoyance, and nothing more or less._

oOo

She was with Yusuke, and Kurama and Kuwabara and Genkai, Yukina and Shizuru and Keiko and even Koenma.

"But how can we trust you?" they asked.

"But _I'm_ the one who's supposed to ask that!" she said, incensed.

They were _wrong_. After all, they weren't the ones who had stuck her in a room with the person who had (_killed her_) nearly killed her. Again. Nearly killed her once more—because he had almost killed her in the past, and because she was already dead. _She had already died, she had drowned in the river that went past her house, and she knew she was dreaming because she could see their faces in her mind—but why were they bleeding, cut into pieces like that?_

"We just don't know, Botan," someone said, shaking their head sadly. It was hard to tell who—they were all blurred, she couldn't make them out clearly, like she had just woken up—even though she knew she was asleep. Maybe she was crying? It didn't feel like she was.

Hiei was with them. He was painfully clear, unlike the rest, and splashed with (_her_) blood.

"_They_ understood," he said. "After all, why else would they let me stay with you while you were asleep?" He smirked. "It was so much _fun_," he added. "You know, you talk in your sleep."

"Botan." She could tell that it was Koenma, this time, she recognized his voice. "We decided to side with Hiei. He's—well, he's a bit more useful than you, after all, and we had to choose one of you. And technically, he hasn't voided the terms of his release—it's a legal issue, too."

_It's funny. We're underwater again. Can't you feel it in your lungs? And taste the blood on your tongue. Remember dying?_

"Yeah, Botan. Really, we just trust him more, too," said Yusuke. "You've been more stable, yeah, but, well, you've never really fought alongside us. You've never hung your life on the line. I don't really expect you to understand, but, well, if you can rely on someone in a to-the-death fight it counts for more than anything else can. Sorry, Botan."

"But—"

_don't you remember him falling on us from out of the darkness, something predatory and violent made familiar and safe and then unleashed, uncaged, and the driving rain and the _look_ in his eyes as he killed you (_again, _and_ nearly_) as he discarded you like so much trash and moved on to Kurama, and probably from there on to Yusuke, Kuwabara, whatever and whoever else he could find, sword biting and blood flying and then smearing and never quite washing away in the rain, for who knows how long until he collapsed, because there was always more to kill_

"—don't you remember?"

And they look at her blankly—she can see them clearly again—and she knows they don't.

And only Hiei stayed by her side.

And watched her become fully herself, at her most vulnerable, watched her as she _slept_.

Like she was now. Because she was dreaming.

_And was he watching her now? He had left, and they—her friends, she had to believe—said that he had left, but they had let him watch in the first place, hadn't they? Despite what he'd done. Despite what happened._

_Was he watching her now, as she dreamt of him and her friends and her parents, the ones she couldn't remember except in dreams? As she dreamt of her death (_her deaths_) and of the deaths of everyone else at his hands._

_Was he watching?_

oOoOoOo

She woke up screaming, but her voice wasn't responsive enough to make any sound. Her body was soaked in sweat, and her skin was crawling. The room was probably empty.


	11. Understanding II

**Accidents and Aftermath**  
**Chapter Eleven: Understanding II**  
By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho in any way, shape or form.

**Author's Notes:** Chapter eleven! Woo-hoo!

Because it came up in a review, I'll say it again: I'm sorry these chapters are so short, but this is a really emotionally exhausting story, so it's hard for me to write longer ones. (It also depends on my outline, which is based on the individual steps made by the characters each chapter, instead of how long the chapter turns out to be.) In short: I'll try for longer updates, but I can't promise anything. Of course, there's only two left… This chapter is 7 pages long, a page longer than the last one.

Review check: I'm worried about whether or not the end of this chapter was realistic/reasonable for Botan at this point. Thoughts, please?

I'm sorry to everyone who was confused by the last chapter, and all of the dream sequences. They were supposed to be at least a _little_ confusing, because dreams usually are, but not _that_ much. O.o

I'm working on getting the final chapters written and posted as soon as I can!

As always, please read and review!

oOoOoOo

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do children as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." Helen Keller

"Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I'd like to see you in better living conditions." Hafiz

"True love is not for the faint-hearted." Meher Baba

oOoOoOo

_She woke up screaming, but her voice wasn't responsive enough to make any sound. Her body was soaked in sweat, and her skin was crawling._

The room was empty. She had checked.

Even Hiei couldn't manage to hide in the room itself—not that that would stop him. He could be anywhere else, with _so_ very few people capable of stopping him, and no matter where he was his Jagan could let him watch.

But still, the room was empty. At least, it was now.

She shivered in the aftermath of her dreams, propping herself against a wall and hugging a pillow to herself, looking out at the empty room.

She was tired, but she didn't really want to sleep. She wanted—

_Something_, but she didn't know what.

oOo

"How is she?" said Hiei, after Kurama had been there a few minutes, once it was clear that he wasn't willing to just go away again.

"Recovering," he said, and ordinarily Hiei would take the sympathy in his voice as an open invitation for a fight, but he was pretty self-pitying right now all on his own. Really, he couldn't attack Kurama for what he's doing himself—_and he had thrown himself on Kurama with intent to kill just a few short weeks ago, mind blinded and drugged and leaving him with nothing but fierce anger and the desire to kill, to destroy, to attack and fight and revel in blood and severed flesh and death_—and it was all just too similar to what he's already done, what he had once expected he'd have to do (he'd entered in a truce with him, true, but demons never really trust in their partners or expect them to hold up their end of the bargain) but that had changed, over the years, what with one thing and another, and trust had been just one part of what had built up.

"Oh," he said, not knowing what else to say.

"I think you should wait a while to see her," Kurama added.

Hiei's teeth clenched, jaw tightened, the movements short and abrupt, unchosen.

It didn't pass by Kurama unnoticed. He made as if to say something, his mouth opening briefly, but he decided against it, and closed it again.

"I… know," said Hiei, voice low.

Ordinarily, Kurama wouldn't press Hiei like this, but he _needed_ it right now. He needed something—anything—to break him out of the mood, the shell, he was in.

And ordinarily, Hiei would have had one of two reactions, Kurama thought, to his statements: a refusal to let him dictate what he did, or something along the lines of "Why would I want to see the silly, useless woman anyways?"

The blank, hurting, non-reactionary acceptance was unnerving.

"I think a few weeks would be good."

"I'm not going to see her again, fox," said the fire demon, and Kurama drew back, honestly surprised.

"Why not?" he said, and he let some of his raw surprise, his lack of understanding, slip into his tone.

Hiei looked at him like he was stupid. "She's— _scared_ of me. Frightened. I won't—

"—do that to her…"

And Kurama realized, suddenly and horribly, that his friend's eye's were reddened, irritated—he'd been crying.

And he knew that he had totally misunderstood the scale of the attachment between them, Hiei and Botan. Or at least from Hiei to Botan, because she was still horrified by the very thought that Hiei might be near. The nurses had said that her dreams had had her nearly panicking.

But Hiei. He'd never shown emotion like that before, not really. He cared—they all knew he cared, that he'd changed, become a better person, because of his time with them—but he'd never shown it, and he'd never let it appear to be a weakness.

He'd never cried like this.

Kurama can understand it, a little—Botan has a pure heart, and in many ways she's the opposite of Hiei, but the two compliment each other.

Kurama thought that Hiei thought of Botan as an embodiment of innocence, the twin to his own darkness, and he almost destroyed that, something he cared for but could not become, something he wanted but did not possess. He had pressed her away from him, but he had wanted to—and been too afraid to—draw her in close.

And then he had almost killed her, and so he had clutched frantically at the broken pieces.

And then she had turned on him.

Suddenly, Kurama feels unprepared for this.

"I don't think she—hates you, Hiei."

"She blames me. For almost _killing_ her. And I did, Kurama, you know I did—you know how close it was as much as I do. She blames me for attacking you, Yusuke—for _turning_ on you." Hiei's voice was bitter.

"I don't blame you," said Kurama mildly, and Hiei glared at him, his eyes bright with anger.

The _'you don't matter, only _she_ does_' went unspoken. And '_you, a reformed thief, a renowned demon?_'

For once, Hiei _wanted_ to talk, to explain—like he had to Botan's unconcious body. He wouldn't do that again, talk to her like that. She had been horrified by the very idea that he had been in the room with her.

But habits engrain themselves deeply. He couldn't quite bring himself to do it, to talk—it had taken silence and a listener who couldn't listen, before, to bring it out of him the first time, and there was _history_ with Kurama. There was pride, and showing weakness, and showing trust.

He wanted to talk, but he also didn't, and that was stronger.

"Botan's very forgiving," said Kurama, like it was a _revelation_, like it was relevant, like it wasn't painfully obvious to anyone who knew her, and the Tantei were possibly some of the people who knew her best.

And something in Hiei broke.

"If I see her again, she'll scream and panic. If she doesn't, she'll go all quiet, draw in on herself. _She won't be herself around me again_. It was a miracle she came to trust me at all, after how we met, and now you think it'll happen again?"

Kurama was startled by the sudden flow of words. Again, there was a flood of revelation.

Because something like this had happened already, hadn't it? And Hiei remembered, even if Kurama hadn't thought it relevant to this at all, hadn't even thought to think of dwelling on it.

He didn't know what Botan thought of Hiei now, except that she was horrified, that she felt vulnerable (and compared to all the rest of them, she was, even though she was strong) and betrayed. He didn't know the depth, the reasoning, the thought patterns and processes she was going through.

"She's still a little fuzzy from her coma. If you give her some time to calm down, collect herself, adjust to the new situation and what she's missed…"

Hiei sneered, his disgust clear. "I won't put her through that." And again, Kurama could hear unsaid words tacked on to the end of it: "_I've put her through too much already_."

Hiei clearly wasn't shifting his point of view. Kurama was getting nowhere with this conversation—all he had really determined was that this was necessary, utterly and totally necessary, for the sake of Hiei, and for Botan, and for all of them. They—the Tantei, Koenma, Genkai—relied on both of them, each in their own way.

And Hiei needed Botan.

oOo

Explanations wouldn't stop fluttering through Botan's mind: _he wouldn't leave your side, he was so worried—it wasn't really him—the same poison that almost killed you affected him, as well—it wasn't his fault, Botan_.

It just felt _wrong_. She was _afraid_; she didn't want to think about forgiveness. Not while she could still picture him, attacking her in the middle of the fight, sword swinging out towards her from the darkness and the rain and the growing shreds of fog.

She had forgiven him once already.

And she knew about forgiveness. She was a ferry girl; she had been given a second lease on life, one she was pathetically grateful for, for no real reason other than one had been needed, she fit the demographic, she had had approximately the right personality and _she_ _had been lucky_. There had been hundreds of other possibilities, but their souls had all been processed. They had gone on, and only Botan, because she was _lucky_, had gotten to stay.

And in a way, all second chances were like that: gifts, a surprise, something inexplicable and miraculous. She loved them.

And she had been hesitant of Hiei before, especially at the beginning, because of what he had done, the crimes he had committed, without so much as batting an eye. She _knew_, and so she was suspicious, but they had been assigned to work together, and she had tried.

She had _tried_. She had succeeded once already, she didn't want to do it a second time, as irrational as it sounds. As infantile.

But she had loved forgiving, the first time around. She had loved getting to trust him, getting to know him a little. She had thought he had _changed_—

She had known he had changed. But that had changed, too.

Not according to Kurama, or Yusuke, or even Kuwabara, who so rarely said anything complimentary about Hiei—their ridiculous sibling rivalry at work. And even with what's changed, even with what Hiei has done, the idea of Kuwabara and Hiei quarreling like brothers (because they _do_) was enough to make her smile, enough to force her to repress laughter.

Could she believe in the excuse of poison gas?

_Maybe_.

She didn't know. Didn't want to know. Even though she loved to forgive, to move on, to grow above something, to continue to live, she didn't want to forgive this, absolve Hiei of his guilt this time, for this crime.

_But she did, and she knew it, she just didn't want to admit she knews it, because she wanted to have someone to blame—_

The first time she'd died, she knew, she'd had no one to blame but herself. Most of her file is sealed, known only to Koenma and her dreams, but she's read what she can. Her death was marked an accident. It's true of most ferry girls—violent deaths make shattered, broken souls, bitter ones, and ferry girls weren't supposed to be like that. They were for healing, for leading the departed to peace and acceptance.

She's done a prime job of doing that, Botan thought, bitter.

Could she forgive Hiei, for the sake of the rest of the Reikai Tantei, for the peace of mind of Koenma?

She couldn't. She _wanted_ to be selfless, wanted to be a good person, wanted to do the _right_ thing, but she couldn't, not in this. Not while she could still remember.

Could she forgive him for his own sake?

No. She has never even known if Hiei actually _likes_ her, at all; she knew he tolerated her, somewhat, for the sake of his duties, but there'd never been any evidence of anything stronger. There had been a lot of evidence for the other side of the argument, though.

And she had been the first one to fall under his sword…

So could she forgive him for herself?

_Maybe_.

Maybe. Because she wanted to be selfless, but she wanted to forgive others more than anything else—not for their sake, shamefully, but because _it's who she wanted to be_.

Would that be enough? She didn't know. Did she even want to try? She thought not, but that wasn't good enough. She'd try anyways. Try to be understanding. Try, slowly, to forgive, because it's all she could do, really.

oOo

It was late when Hiei arrived back in the spirit world; the hallways were dim, and his footsteps sounded loud in the dusty silence, though he knew that he was probably the only person here capable of hearing them.

He could feel the tastes of guilt, of self-disgust, rise in the back of his throat as he walks.

This was disgusting. He had no right to be here, no reason. He's so _weak_ he couldn't stay away, couldn't live through with his own promises, couldn't even rely on his own self.

_Pathetic_.

He paused at Botan's closed door, almost opened it, but didn't.

He had heard of her revulsion of him watching her as she slept. He would respect her wishes that much, since he couldn't bring himself to stay away, which was all she really wanted. _Even if it was more than what she hoped for, because she didn't trust him enough to respect her wishes at all. That, at least, was partly true: he was so weak that he needed a good-bye before he could leave her alone, leave her to heal and grow and become all that she had the promise of becoming. He couldn't leave her alone, but he wanted to. He did care what she thought, no matter that she'd never know it._

So he leaned his head against the solid wood of the door, cool and comforting, took a deep breath in and then let it out.

"Good-bye," he said, just barely more than mouthing the words, because it's what he was here for.

And then he left. Because it was all he could do for her.


	12. Determination

**Accidents and Aftermath**  
**Chapter Twelve: Determination**  
By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer:** I do not own

**Author's Notes**: Second-to-last chapter! I'm not sure I'm ready for it to be over...

As always, please read and review!

oOoOoOo

Three days later, Botan was starting to regain her strength. She was more than ready for it—it had never taken her this long to recover from something (physically, at least) in all of her memories.

She knew that it had to have taken longer in the past, before she had died, but she couldn't remember.

And she needed to be better, because she needed to set things right. And some things were, currently, most definitely wrong.

oOo

Botan had shooed the night nurse out the door, under the pretense that she was tired—not true; she had done nothing but sleep and lie around quietly since she had woken up—and now all that there was left to do was the figure out if she was up to the task she had appointed herself.

She needed to find Hiei.

And for that, she needed to get to the human realm—something she was perfectly capable of ordinarily and, she hoped, right now.

She was not yet entirely up to snuff, certainly. She wasn't tired, but there was a bone-deep ache.

It would have to be enough.

She mustered her strength, breathing deep and drawing on the core of energy that sustained her as a ferry girl. Go smooth, steady, don't rush, they had been taught; when you're weak, take as much time as you can, instead of hurrying. It will give you more of a buffer, will make better use of your power, won't leave you as shattered if your strength gives.

And that—her failure—was a quite possible thing.

So: breathe in, and hold, then release, and force the magic out with it, and let it slice cleanly through the barriers as they recognize it and let it pass—

There. She had done it!

She summoned her oar, mounted, didn't let herself pause with doubt, then flew through into the human realm. Towards Hiei.

oOo

Botan let herself drop to the ground with a relieved gasp. Ordinarily, flying was not a problem; it came natural enough to her that she didn't even really have to think about it. It certainly wasn't a strain.

…At least, normally. It was taking real effort, now. Her legs felt all—wobbly.

She looked through the thicket of branches determinedly, but there was no sign of Hiei. Admittedly, if he didn't want to be found, she wouldn't find him, even if he _was_ here—not even when she was at her best, and she was most definitely _not_ at her best. It wasn't a good night for it, either—it was dark, with the sliver of moon mostly covered with clouds and a high wind was whipping the wet branches around wildly. At least it had stopped raining.

And he might not be here. When he was in the human world, he did tend to spend most of his time in this particular park—it was heavily overgrown with trees, and people rarely ventured very far into it's depths; when they did, though, they were usually drunk as skunks—but there was no guarantee he would be here.

And he usually didn't ignore them when they were looking for him, but things had changed. She wouldn't be able to tell if he wasn't there, not definitively.

"Hiei?" she called out, her voice nervous, tremulous.

She wasn't sure she wanted to see him. She knew she didn't. She also thought she might—although she wasn't sure about that.

Right now, she wasn't sure about a lot.

"Hiei?" she called again, then flinched to the side as a weakened branch, rotted through and made heavy with rain, came crashing to the ground. She muffled a shriek.

The wind was rising. Soon, she wouldn't be able to fly her oar, not as weak as she was.

She needed to keep looking, though. She couldn't give up. It was the one thing she never did, one of the few things she prided herself on.

That, and faith in her friends.

_And where had that gotten her?_

oOo

"Hiei!" she called out again. She was glad it had been such a rough night, in a strange way. It meant she was less likely to draw the wrong sort of attention—the sort of attention given by the type of person who hangs out in dark, rarely-visited parks late at night. That wasn't keeping Botan from being happy the wind was beginning to die down some.

She shivered, and it wasn't completely because of the chill night.

"Are you there?" she called again, and her voice was rough, beginning to give out. At least there was less noise to compete with, now.

She paused to wait for an answer, breath coming heavily. Her legs were wooden blocks, and her head ached furiously—she probably shouldn't have done this, no matter how badly things needed to be worked out. No matter how much she needed to do this.

It was too late to change her mind. Too late to leave without completing what she had come for.

They needed to _talk_. Botan needed to understand.

She—wasn't sure what Hiei needed.

There was no time now, though. She shivered, heaved a sigh. Her clothing—designed for a hospital, if moderately more appealing and comfortable than such things normally were—was thin, and the wind seemed to blow right through it. She was soaked through with the drops of water that were clinging to the trees, left over from the rain that had fallen earlier, before she had left Reikai.

She started walking again. _At least it would keep her warmer_, she thought.

Botan had been walking for no more than a minute when she tripped, and she had fallen before she realized what had happened—she realized the pain secondly.

Curling up around herself, she muffled a scream that wanted to be a curse. Her ankle felt badly twisted—probably not broken.

And all of a sudden there was warm arms surrounding her. Something subconscious identified the intruder as _'friend'_ before she identified him as _'Hiei'_.

He must have been watching her. Irrational anger filled her—better than fear, at least.

"Could have come—before now," she choked out through the pain, and she was relieved when he moved away from her—away from where he had been wrapped around her, arms comforting and concerned, like a lover's—and around in front of her, so there was a comfortable distance between them and so she could see him, from where she was huddled on the ground, gripping at her wrenched ankle. She knew she probably looked like a wounded animal like this, gazing up at him from her crouch with wary eyes.

"I didn't—" Hiei said, and he looked almost panicked; he looked cornered, torn, pained.

"Didn't bother to respond when I was calling for you in the middle of the night in a seedy park during a wind storm?" Botan's voice was razor-sharp, thin-edged. The hurt was leeching into her voice, was making her angry. Bitter.

_He was still watching her_.

He twitched back, and Botan was ashamed of the rush of satisfaction it gave her.

"I didn't want to—hurt you," he said, voice and eyes lowered.

Botan's own flinch was covered by her shivers; it felt like her whole body was shuddering back and forth.

Her mind was filled with memories, images. _Hiei flinching back from her as she met his eyes with horror, panic_ and herself, _I never want to see him again_. Her own horror. Her pain—

_because he had hurt her, _hurt her_, nearly killed her again—_

and she understood, a little.

"That worked," she said, each word spat out with careful deliberation. She was picking at the scab, she knew, bleeding off her own aggression, her own fears, into this, because she couldn't face the heart of the issue. _Coward_, her mind hissed.

The carefully blank look on Hiei's face was almost enough to make a part of her cry. He looked lost, looked like he was grieving with a pain that cut through understanding until it reached into your very bones and shook you, so that everything else came crashing to the floor.

"I'm sorry," she said. Then again. "Sorry."

He looked up, and his eyes were flat, dead—not with mindless, empty savagery (_she had seen that before, when he came out at them out of the darkness, the wind and the rain howling overhead; it had been a night like this.—_) but with a cut off, controlled sorrow. She had felt that before, Botan thought. The kind of feeling you had to cut away from yourself, because it was too much, otherwise. It was what forced you to shut yourself down, for a while, because living was just too much.

_She had felt that before_.

But why would Hiei…?

_Soulless, heartless, mindless_, her mind chanted. A greater part simply keened with fear.

"I don't know," she said, and she burst into tears.

She sat there in the wind and the first spitting drops of rain, her flimsy hospitable clothes damp and blotched heavily with mud, stained with her blood from where branches had ripped at her as she tried to force her way past, sat there and cried the mostly quiet, gulping, helpless sobs she hadn't cried since— before she could remember.

Before she had died.

Hiei hovered, and Botan couldn't recognize the self-disgust that had slithered onto his face.

"May I—approach you?" he said, finally. Botan's teeth were chattering hard.

She nodded, once, briefly and hesitantly.

"I could carry you to your apartment." It's a statement, but they both heard the question.

"I can't stand," Botan said, turning to look at him, and the stark fear in her eyes was almost enough to make Hiei leave regardless of what she ended up saying, but he stayed, as helpless as she was.

He still hadn't moved towards her, though he had asked to. Botan had never thought he'd be so careful, so delicate with her. She'd never heard his voice so fragile.

"Yes," she said at last, and Hiei took one cautious step in her direction, then stopped. Botan shivered.

Finally, he walked towards her, hesitating again as he reached her, as if unsure of whether or not she was fully aware of what him carrying her would entail. Botan finally raised her arms to him for helping, though she knew how she must look: like a child asking for a piggy-back ride, or as if she was inviting someone to fall back into bed with her, over her.

Hiei lifted her cautiously but easily, and the raw strength in his arms made Botan still, suddenly, cut her shivering off sharp for a brief second before she forced herself to stop tensing. She wiped the damp hair streaming water into her eyes away from her face, and sifted her arms awkwardly, unsure of what to do with them. Hiei was holding her like she was his bride, about to bring her across the threshold of their new life together. She stifled a sob.

And then they were moving, and she didn't know how Hiei was avoiding the vegetation that had impeded her own progress here. Not all of it—a branch knocked a stinging line against her ankle, and another scored a thin cut into her cheek, the blood mixing with the still-falling rain to paint half of her face watery crimson—but much more than she had encountered. She didn't ask him how.

At least she was warmer, now. Hiei's body was like a furnace against her cold skin, warm enough that it was making her fingertips ache with the sudden warmth, and she pressed them together, then hissed as Hiei jumped some obstacle in their path, jolting her ankle. She could feel the joint swelling.

Botan could feel the exhaustion clouding her thoughts, too. Soon, she would fall asleep, regardless of who was there. The rhythm of Hiei's movement made her feel like a baby being rocked to sleep.

Soon, they were at the small balcony of her pocket-sized apartment. Hiei softly let her down, and Botan tried to let go, but almost collapsed again as her foot touched the floor. Hiei moved too swiftly for her eyes to see to catch her, and she was forced to stifle a scream at his sudden lunge for her. He muttered what might have been a curse, and moved as far away as he could while still supporting her. Botan turned her eyes away from him, and hobbled into her home.

She fell asleep before she could make it from the water closet to her futon, but after she had stripped out of the soaked, torn, muddied, bloodied and dirtied remains of the hospital garments and into clean pajamas the same bright blue as the sky at the end of afternoon. She awoke briefly to Hiei lifting her up from the hallway floor and moving her down it, but only stayed awake long enough to mutter "don't leave," at him, fiercely, before she dropped back into her deep, dreamless slumber.

Hiei's expression made him look painfully young.

She awoke to late-afternoon sunshine splashed onto her walls, and carefully scanned the room. It was empty.

Somebody—Hiei—had bandaged her ankle tightly, and Botan found she could hobble around if she was careful enough, and supported most of her weight against the bureau or the wall.

She walked into the living area of her home, and drew up short at the sight of Hiei still there, in the opposite corner of the apartment from her room; subconsciously or calculatedly, he was facing the blind-covered window, away from the room she had lain while she had been sleeping.

"I… stayed," he said, voice wary, turning to face her.

"You stayed," she said, and even she knows that her words are utterly pointless, entirely irrelevant. Something that almost wanted to be anger flickered across Hiei's face, but it was dismissed. He doesn't scold her for inanity, or for talking too much. He doesn't do so much as pointedly 'hn' at her stupid, pointless agreement, said merely for the sake of saying _something_.

She fought so hard to talk to him, then had nothing to say. She wanted to start crying again.

"Why?" she said, finally, and she didn't elaborate. Hiei merely looked at her for a minute, then looked away before he started talking.

"Because I—needed someone to talk to.

"Because it was my fault—" Botan's breath caught at the reminder, at the memories "—and because I was…

"..wrong…

"Not to give you the respect you deserve." The words fell from his mouth like stones, heavy and solid with guilt and remorse, and reluctant.

"And because—

_you are everything I am not and wish I could be_

"—you are needed. Because I _need_ you, because we all need you, you're a part of what we are and it's more than that, you give us hope and keep us moving forward, and because I've destroyed that for so long—"

Hiei paused, heaved a sigh. When he spoke again, the urgency, the welter of emotional background noise, had faded from his voice.

"—and I'd thought I'd changed and then I did it again." His eyes were downcast, so Botan couldn't see the suspicious sparkle of gathering tears.

Botan's breath was catching in her throat with suppressed emotion, with confusion, with disbelief and pain and understanding.

"And so I left. Because I've almost killed you, directly, at least twice. And because I am never going to be enough. And because I—

_love you_

"—didn't want to hurt you any more."

'_And so I didn't reveal myself to you in the forest, and I hurt you again because of it,'_ went unspoken.

Botan fidgeted with the hem of her pajamas, picked at a loose thread.

"I'll go now," said Hiei finally, voice harsh, and stood abruptly. Again, Botan flinched slightly away.

"But come back," she said, and she raised her eyes to face his. Hiei fled.

--End--


	13. Possibilities

**Accidents and Aftermath  
Chapter Thirteen: Possibilities  
**By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho, or the poem "Proof," which is by Emily Dickinson, or the quotes, which are from Julian of Norwich and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

**Author's Notes:** It's over. Done with. Finished. Complete.

I'm a little bit heartbroken.

Seriously, though, I've gotten very attached to this fic, for a variety of reasons. (I will probably rant about them sometime at my writing livejournal, dream (underscore) it (underscore) all (dot) livejournal (dot) com. Feel free to stop by, and if you do, please comment! I am a friendly person, really, and I'd love to hear from you.)

While Accidents and Aftermath is complete as of this chapter, I am (shameless plugging starts here) starting another Hiei/Botan fic. I am incapable of not having one going at all times, apparently. It's tentatively titled Just Another Traditional Love Story and will be, in fact, a traditional love story. Only with more Hiei/Botan. I think it'll be a good change from A'n'A, not that I haven't loved writing it. (I have, for the record.) (Again, probably more on this at my LJ.)

When it comes to this chapter, I have to warn that it's ridiculously long. I blame my outline. Which I also wrote, but hey. Seriously, though—the longest chapter I've ever written, by 4 pages and 2,000 words. The previous record-setter was a Naruto oneshot 28 pages long—this one's 32 pages, and 13,200 words or so. I really didn't want to cut this into smaller pieces, though…

oOo

Although my author's note(s) is (are) ridiculously long at this point, I'd really like to thank all my readers for this fic. It's been a long trip—I started writing this fic in August 2005. (This probably won't match up with the first post date, though.) Some particular standouts are Robin Autumn, RitSuYue, tsukigana, graviola, Thunder Ring, TheUniverseBeyond, MystiKoorime, MiaHime and Animoon. Also, MoonlitSorrow, who's new here but pretty awesome anyways.

In particular, I'd like to thank **omasuoniwabanshi**, who has (literally, I think) reviewed every chapter of every Hiei/Botan fic I've written to this point, minus the weird oneshot, which means 25 reviews. And they are all fantastic. It means a lot. Thank you for putting up with me this long, and with this much grace!

oOoOoOo

"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere else insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were simply necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

--Alexander Solzhenitsyn

oOoOoOo

Botan looked into the dregs of her cup of tea, and wished she could see—well, not the future, really, but at least the _truth_—in it.

She wanted to **know**. She wanted to **understand**. She wanted to **forgive**, but she didn't know anything, didn't understand anything, couldn't forgive anything.

But she could try. And she was trying.

Hiei's parting words echoed through her mind: "I'll go." Said just like that, simply and (pained) and harshly—but none of his not-quite-anger had been directed at her.

And her own words, in response to him: "But come back."

Then there was what else he had said, earlier. "Because I didn't want to hurt you anymore." "And because I am never going to be enough." "I'd thought I'd changed and then I did it again."

_He wasn't supposed to be… _human some part of her mind insisted.

And what he had said felt almost—familiar. It shouldn't, though. Hiei had never said anything like that to her, before. He'd barely had the courtesy to use her name. He never said anything like that to _anyone._

But he had watched her as she slept. She frowned. _What had he done all day? Just watched her…?_

Some part of her remembered the vague murmuring of his voice washing over her in waves, calm and soothing despite everything that had happened. Despite how his voice sounded pained, raw and vulnerable.

Botan didn't know if Hiei would come back at all. She didn't know when he would return, if he did. She didn't know if he would ever let himself be that emotionally vulnerable around her again.

She should probably contact the Spirit World. Someone had probably discovered she was missing, by now, and with Hiei gone as well, there was a chance that someone would assume the worst. Not any of the Tantei, of course, but you never knew.

oOo

Botan was amazed by the chaos that greeted her as she opened up a link to the Spirit World. "Hello?" she said, questioningly. None of the ogres rushing past Koenma's desk seemed to notice. "Hello…?" she tried again.

"Botan!" said Kurama's voice, coming from the left of the screen. He moved until she could see him through it; he looked remarkably relieved.

"Kurama," Botan said. "What's going on? Is there some sort of attack? Is Enma returning?"

"We've been looking for you," he said. "You just disappeared out of your bed, nobody had the slightest clue what was going on…"

"I wanted to go home," she said, feeling a tinge of guilt. It was true—she _had_ wanted to be in her own apartment, her own space—but it still wasn't the driving reason she'd left. Not a lie, exactly.

Kurama eyed her, his calculating glare going right through her. Botan smiled weakly.

"I'll tell you later," she said, voice soft but intense, urgent. "I'm at my apartment in Ningenkai," she continued, louder.

"Wait, is that Botan?" said Yusuke's voice from off-screen.

"Yes," said Kurama simply.

"Thank goodness!" said Koenma's voice. "Where is she, Kurama? Is she okay? Nobody's asking for a ransom or anything?"

"No, it's fine. She left of her own volition, and she's in her apartment in the human world right now."

"Are you okay?" said Kuwabara, appearing in the view screen. "You're not hurt, still feeling okay?"

"I'm feeling a lot better, actually," Botan said, surprised to find it was true. "I sprained my ankle, and I've got a few cuts and scrapes, but I'm fine other than that. The wound—" (_the wound that Hiei had given her_) "—in my side is fine. It's starting to close, around the edges, now that my healing ability's recovering."

There were sighs of relief. In the background, Botan could hear orders to stop search parties and bring them back home being handed out.

"This… This was all about me?" she said weakly.

"We had no idea what had happened to you!" half-yelled Yusuke. "You can't just disappear like that and expect nothing to happen, can you?! And when you're already hurt…"

"I'm sorry," said Botan, face flushing painfully red. "I— I didn't think that it would be this big of a fuss…"

"I'll send someone to go pick you up," said Koenma.

"Please don't," said Botan. "I'd rather stay here."

Koenma looked at her, eyes penetrating just as far as Kurama's had. "Okay, then," he said. "If it's what you want. I want someone to go check up on you, though, get you groceries and make sure everything's alright."

"I'll go," said Kuwabara and Yusuke simultaneously.

"I'm going as well," said Kurama quietly but emphatically.

"Yes, sir," said Botan meekly. "Kurama, Kuwabara, Yusuke, thank you."

Botan cut the connection with considerably more relief than she was used to. Whatever she had expected, she hadn't expected that! From the looks of things, Reikai couldn't have been running at more than a quarter its regular capacity, if that. That that would happen was… Unthinkable. And all for her…

Despite all of her worries, and despite the embarrassment, she felt her heart fill with warmth at the knowledge that they had done that for her. Shallow as that might sound, they had been worried about _her_.

oOo

Botan was puttering around in the kitchen, trying to think of something to make that sounded good to her still-slightly-touchy stomach. The fact that Yusuke and Kuwabara had picked up the groceries hadn't helped. She was lucky she had gotten fresh vegetables at _all_, she supposed.

She jumped a little when the doorbell rang—she wasn't expecting anyone. She had thought that everyone had already visited her, and left once Genkai had picked up on the fact that she had been a little overwhelmed, and forcibly chased everyone out of the room.

"Hello—" she began brightly as she opened the door, the word catching in her mouth as she recognized the person she was facing. She ignored the way her heart stuttered, and didn't flinch back. "Hiei," she said softly.

He didn't respond for a few minutes, and Botan thought he wasn't going to. A brief rush of anger (and something else, something indescribable) flooded through her, mixing with the fear—he had never really acknowledged her. She had always been the useless one on the team.

"Botan," he said, just as softly, and Botan's head jerked up, the spark of anger in her eyes fading quickly, at the edge he had given the word—it was pained and accepting and sorrowful, all at once, with a depth to it that was filled with something intense and rock-solid-steady and _peaceful_, and she shivered to hear it.

It was funny. Hiei had never bothered to knock, before. The few times he had deigned to enter her apartment, he had snuck in through a window, door or balcony, just showing up and announcing himself when he saw fit. He'd never _asked_ to be let in before, not even to the extent of knocking—which was just a way to announce your presence and request entry, when all was said and done.

The two of them were standing like gaping idiots at the front door. Behind Hiei, she could see a slightly peeved older gentleman trying to get past the two of them with several bags of groceries.

She took a step back, to give Hiei enough room to enter; he jerked back at the movement, though, backing up against the wall behind him faster and more fluidly gracefully than any human could manage. Her neighbor seemed to have noticed that at least _something_ was off—he frowned heavily in the direction of the demon, glaring through slightly smeared glasses.

_Why had Hiei backed off? Had it been to… to avoid her?_

Hiei started a little as his darting eyes finally caught onto the man. His expression shifted, and Botan suddenly had the impression that he hadn't realized the man had been there, before. That was more than unusual. Hiei _never_ dropped his guard, certainly not when there was only Botan around and he was in unfamiliar territory, and even then it was unthinkable that the ferry girl would actually be more on top of a situation—_any_ situation—than the fire demon.

"Excuse me," said the man stiffly, striding past the two frozen beings taking up the hallway.

The two stood utterly still as the man walked between them, then shuffled into his own apartment after fumbling with his key. Hiei stayed where he was, back glued to the hallway wall, as far away from Botan as he could physically get while still remaining in the hall.

"I'm… sorry I'm doing this to you," said Hiei lowly. "I should have known—I'll go."

"What?" said Botan. She sounded honestly confused, startling Hiei into looking up to meet her befuddled eyes.

"Come in," she said, possibly on automatic, still standing to one side and holding the door open.

Hiei's eyes sharpened and cleared. He hadn't realized that she hadn't been trying to put more distance between them, the opening door leaving them close together, but had instead been trying to give him room to enter her apartment.

She _hadn't_ been backing away in fear. She had been inviting him into her home.

"Please, sit down," said Botan. "I'll go get the tea." Her mind was clearly elsewhere as she worked through the niceties of social visits, even though it was just Hiei who was there. _Hiei_, who wouldn't bother with basic manners like 'don't insult your teammates and friends,' let alone delicate matters like 'it's rude not to offer a seat and food or drinks to a guest.' Still, it left Botan with something to do while she worked her mind down from its panic and prepared herself for the coming conversation. Hiei was glad of the courtesy, for the first and probably last time in his life.

After a few minutes, Botan emerged from the kitchen, two cups of tea and some snacks with her. Her own cup was a chipped mug, Hiei noticed, although his own was much nicer. He stilled himself as she approached him enough to set the tray she was carrying down on the coffee table, waiting until after she had retreated to her own seat, kitty-corner to his, before he gathered up his own cup.

The silence was long and heavy, and Hiei was painfully aware of the heavy ticking on the clock Botan had on her wall. He hadn't remembered it being that loud, the few other times he'd been there. Maybe she'd replaced it. It was hard to resist the urge to smash the thing, or at least move it somewhere very, very far away. He would have entertained the idea as a way to pass the time, but the atmosphere was too tense, what would end up being said too momentous, was too repressive.

And then there was how Botan would react to him drawing his sword around her at all, especially without any obvious threat, and attacking something, even if it wasn't _her_. That wasn't funny. It was painful, in a way he hadn't felt for a long, long time, and never exactly like this.

The quiet clink as Botan set her mug against the glass surface of the low table between them was just as magnified in the quiet.

"What—What did you do? While you were—" she broke off, and didn't finish the sentence. She didn't actually say "while you were watching me," but they both hear the words anyway.

Hiei shifted uneasily, but he owed her the truth.

"Mostly, I watched you," he said, and his eyes catch the tremor that runs through her, the motion faint enough that it's possible that it was entirely possible that it had been completely subconscious, never even noticed by her preoccupied self.

The two sit in uneasy silence, Botan playing with the handle of the empty mug she had picked back up, just to give her fingers something to do.

"Sometimes, I talked," said Hiei, voice almost rushed, even though he had tried not to make it sound like he was being harried, hurried, by his own nervousness. By the weight of the confession he was about to make.

Botan looked up, but she didn't ask the question: 'What did you talk to me about?' went unsaid., the non-words falling into near-silence like rocks into a still pond, creating ripples against the smoothness of the water.

Hiei was looking away, a barely-there, nearly-invisible blush rising to his cheeks; Botan would have been tempted to laugh, maybe even despite what had happened, but for the fierce, hooded look in his eyes as he stared at something across the room and behind her, eyes just over and to the side of one of her right shoulder.

"The first— _conversation_ I had was… Was admitting I was guilty. To you. But more to myself. But it was very quiet in that room. And it made me feel better. Although in a way it made me feel worse.

"And I did a lot of thinking. It took—" _too much thought _"—a lot of thought to just to realize that I felt guilt at all. To confess to that, even if just to myself." _And your unconscious, possibly-dead body_.

"So I began to understand myself a little better. My second realization was…"

His blush grew heavier.

"…Was that I… I wanted people to care, even though they didn't." Botan started a little at the words, eyes jolted halfway to Hiei's face from her down-turned inspection of her knees before her gaze returned firmly back to where it had been.

She didn't say 'But people do care!' even though she knew they do, because some strong part of her can't admit to that, not when even the strongest parts that made up who she was were terrified, wanting to flinch away from the frightening-despite-it-all figure seated harmlessly across the table from her, picking at a loose thread in a cushion.

"I realized I respected you, for everything you did. You were always… positive, cheerful, and I never understood that. I… I hadn't thought that you must have had your problems as well, and I never saw you… Give in to that."

Botan looked squarely at him, this time. "Neither did you. You almost had me believing you—" she sounded almost betrayed.

"_I never had anyone I could speak to_. I had no one, because no one even knew I was— _capable_ of feeling anything. You weren't. You aren't. Anyone I could have approached… They would have laughed, or— Nobody would take me seriously, believe me, if I approached them with something like that. People nearly _expected_ it of you, I certainly did, but you never gave in."

Botan's stunned by the pure, raw emotion in his voice, the aching need. The loneliness. It hits her like a punch to the gut, and it hurts so much it takes away her breath. She's always been sympathetic, but she had never imagined something like this, not in Hiei. Her mind and heart don't want to believe in it. Some part of her is crying out to it in turn.

"And I realized how much everyone needed you. How much _I_ needed you, because nobody else ever believed like you did. You could bend iron around your will, and you never gave up hope. Yusuke would never stop fighting, but you just believed. It wasn't expecting something, or hoping for something, but pure conviction. None of us had that.

"So I began to understand that we all needed you, just for who you are. Even though you can't fight. And sometimes you—bothered me—" Botan lets out a sharp huff of breath, eyes narrowing into a glare although they don't lift, and Hiei breaks off slightly, breath coming slightly ragged, before he continues. "—but I hadn't realized why. I'd… Never liked to rely on anyone, and I'd never understood you before.

"Or myself. I was afraid, Botan." There's that pain again, his words almost a plea, carrying some heavy, deep understanding that Botan feels like she's drowning in, unable to understand. And what he's saying to her—she'd have laughed, if someone had told her, before, and after the incident she would have felt betrayed and afraid. "I'd never been afraid before. I'd never admitted it. But you made me do it. I was afraid of losing you." His eyes are suspiciously bright, as if he might cry, Botan realizes with pained surprise, horrified at the very thought—how would she react to Hiei crying at all, let alone crying around her? He'd never trusted her enough to show her that he had any emotion at all. Before all this. Her mind's fuzzy, having trouble grasping what he's telling her, and crowded with empathetic pain.

"And I was afraid of you living." Botan sucks in a deep breath and tenses, drawing back a little, afraid that now she's going to die after all, for a brief second, until she looks up to see that Hiei's drawn back as well, more than she has, pressing himself against the bright floral pattern of the cushion behind him. He looks terrified, but she doesn't know what of. She doesn't think he's going to kill her. "Because you would… React like this." The words are spoken softly, and Botan has to strain to hear them. At first, she thinks she must have misheard, because it just doesn't make sense, that Hiei would be afraid of having what he has always wanted: Fear. Respect.

"You're not yourself around me, like this. You're not who you really are. It hurts." The words are bleak, and instead of that overwhelming emotion there's just looming, gaping nothingness in his tone, an empty chasm of non-emotion.

"Because…" He faltered, and Botan couldn't understand why. He has said more than she's ever heard him say before, and said things she had never imagined he even felt, or recognized, or would share. He was silent so long that Botan was certain he'd finished, and she was about to say something—if only she could think of something, could process what she's been given, could _understand_—when he started talking again.

"I realized I loved you." And then he was gone, blurring past her fast enough that she threw herself backwards against the chair in surprise and fear—so hard that it tipped over, sending her crashing to the floor—although he was already gone by then, moving too fast for her to keep up..

She sat on the floor and cried. Half an hour later she realized she was bleeding, so she got up and bandaged the slight scrape, and the reopened cut caused by her trip across the park carried by Hiei. She had forgotten to turn off the teakettle, and it had boiled dry, the metal glowing a dull red. She turned the heat off numbly, and left the kettle to cool on the stove.

oOo

Hiei had never liked to cry, and it wasn't just because it was showing weakness. The murky, cracked and flawed gems he produced along with the tears always seemed to mock him.

oOo

Hiei loved her, Botan thought numbly, and she couldn't think of a reason why Hiei would have said something like that.

_Unless it was true._

Because it couldn't be true, but Botan couldn't think what sort of advantage that sort of confession would bring. It gave an explanation of what he did while she had been sleeping, at least a little, but there was much better ways he could have done that, without sacrificing that much of his dignity, his image as the removed, cold, calculating warrior. Maybe he was meaning to make himself seem more human, less threatening? You'd think he would have been more believably in-character, though, if he had tried that.

Botan made herself a cup of warm milk, careful to turn off the heat even while she ignored the creaking of the cooling teakettle. She was careful not to think of anything Hiei had said, and fell asleep quickly.

She dreamt, though, and tossed in her sleep.

oOo

_She is underwater, and water is flowing past her. It is gentle, enveloping her and body-warm, soft and comforting._

_Snatches of conversation, half-caught, flow past her ears on the current, catching against her body and breaking like bubbles, popping their sounds against her. She listens, and the words are eerily familiar. It's Hiei's voice, she realizes dimly after what feels like hours. It's hard to tell. She's certainly heard a lot of words, by now. The tone their spoken in ranges from sad to angry to bitter, but it's never happy. It's never unemotional. That seems somehow wrong. Not that Hiei's not happy, but that he seems to care so deeply. For her, if the conversations are true._

_She can't move, but that's alright._

oOo

Hiei would have left by now, but Koenma had sent him orders to stay in the area. He could tell that Kurama had been involved.

He would have ignored the instructions, but he couldn't bring himself to force Koenma to send the only friends he had after him. He knew that there wasn't anyone else on Reikai staff who had half a hope against him. There hadn't been when he had first been brought in, and his skill level had improved exponentially. They had all become more powerful than he had ever imagined.

He was pretty sure, though, that he wouldn't have left even if he hadn't been ordered to stay.

oOo

Botan woke up with a headache at five in the morning, and stumbled into the bathroom to fish painkillers out of her medicine cabinet. She woke up again at six, then again at eight. She crawled out of bed and into the living room at nine.

She resisted the urge to be self-pitying and indulgent, then berated herself when she gave into it anyways. Then she cried for a while at her utter incompetence, her inability to deal with anything.

And then she thought about Hiei.

His words from the day before kept slipping through her mind, winding through her thoughts like eels. They were echoed by her dreams, but it felt more like a memory.

_What she remembered… Some people remembered what happened around them when they were comatose. She had just thought that she hadn't… Had she been wrong?_

It's surprisingly easy to change your world-view, Botan knew. She had done it, more often than most people had. What was hard was changing it when you didn't really want to, deep-down inside. Even though she maybe might.

There were all these disparate images. Who _was_ Hiei? There was the creature she had fought with, when she had first met him, a ruthless demon who would do anything to further his own means. There was the surface-Hiei she had worked with, a cold and removed person who would never lower himself to her position, had no tolerance for her uselessness and even less for her personality. There was the deeper-Hiei of that same time period, the one who fought alongside Yusuke, Kuwabara and Kurama, would fight for them and with them, the demon with a strong sense of honor and morals.

There was the nightmare that had come down on her out of the dark, transfixed by battle and simply throwing her aside, wanting only to fight even if that meant killing his best friend—regardless that he wouldn't admit that that's what Kurama was—and not caring about anyone, anything, except for the heat of battle.

There was the Hiei who had stayed by her side, gloating. There was the Hiei who had stayed by her side, transfixed by guilt. There was the Hiei who had stayed by her side, desperate and alone and afraid and needing her. That was the Hiei who loved her.

Hiei, who said he loved her. Hiei, who had tried to kill her. Hiei, who had stayed by her side.

oOo

She couldn't sleep that night, even those she was tired, heavy with the sort of exhaustion that seeps into your bones and aches. She left her bedroom because of the flickering shadows cast by the clouds scudding through the sky and over the full moon, but the gloom and still-creaking teapot in the living room was worse. Finally, she found her bathrobe and slipped it on over her pajamas, then quietly left her apartment for the roof of the building.

The roof was cold and slightly damp, but it wasn't raining. Botan found a slightly drier spot in the lee of a chimney, and sat with her back against the brickwork, watching the constantly-shifting patterns the clouds formed against the night sky. It used to be that you could see more stars, but with this sort of light—from the moon and the city—there were only a few. She half-wanted to make a wish, but didn't.

And then she cried again, because it was surprisingly easy to cry, during the bright night with the clouds rolling past above her head and the wind moaning through the rooftops of the city and blowing her hair into her open mouth, sticking it to the tears on her face, when she was gasping in the cold night air, almost painful to breath.

oOo

Hiei watched her, and hated himself for it.

At least she wasn't sleeping.

But there wasn't anyone else watching her, and Botan was never weak but she was also never physically strong, even at the best of times, and she had just come out of a coma.

He turned away when she started to cry, and waited until she got up to go back inside before he looked again. He tried not to listen, and hated himself for doing that much. But it was important that Botan be safe. He had to be there.

And he could turn his head away from her when she cried. And ignore her gasped breath and the muffled half-sobs. And give her whatever privacy he could manage.

He left, to return to the park, when she crawled back into bed.

oOo

Botan woke up without any memories of her dream, and without the prickly-crawly sensation that someone had just been whispering to her, murmuring. The memory made her shiver, and it was partly fear and partly uncertainty and partly the strange intimacy of the situation she had been in.

Botan wondered where Hiei was, if he had left for the demon world, after his confession. It would fit what she knew of him, but very little he'd done in the past few weeks did. She might need to reevaluate.

She didn't know what to think.

Botan wondered if she could trust him, and then wondered if she couldn't. Nobody had ever told her they loved her, before. It hadn't been… _lonely_, but it felt that way now. She hadn't been alone, though.

She was _pathetic_. She was being targeted, that was the only explanation; nobody else Hiei interacted with would serve as a foil for the sort of dating-scheme she must be involved in: the rest of the Tantei was male, Yukina was his sister, Genkai was old (actually, so was Hiei, come to think of it,) Keiko was human—and another person he had tried to kill—and Shizuru was a) violent and b) related to Kuwabara.

She discarded the theory a few seconds later. Hiei didn't have the interpersonal skills to pull something like that off.

And it—it just felt _wrong_ somehow.

(And she remembered. She had snippets of him talking to her while she was unconscious buried in her mind, kneaded into her subconscious. You couldn't fake that, not even when you were Hiei.)

But could she trust him? She didn't know. He had come back. She had already trusted him enough to talk to him, even after she had confronted him. She had been afraid of him, for everything he had done, when he had appeared out of nowhere to catch her as she stumbled (while she had been looking for him, true,) but she had also been angry, for how he had hidden until then. And he had taken her into his arms and carried her home, to a cup of hot tea and a change of dry clothes and indoor heating, and she had still been afraid, but she had been afraid and… and… and _something_.

And he had said he loved her. It felt unreal, impossible, even now—what, two days later? It didn't even feel that long ago. She still didn't know what to think.

_Did Hiei love her_? she asked herself, and some part of her answered, deep and instinctive and sure, _yes_. Her rational mind dismissed it, but also catalogued reasons why, to counterbalance the list of reasons why not. Another part of her just remembered Hiei, suddenly in front of her, sword a blur, appearing out of the dark.

Botan consciously willed her mind to silence, and got out a pad of paper.

First came a list:

_1. trust Hiei_

_2. love me?_

_3. my feelings—unknown_

_4. What do I do?_

_5. and how._

Botan paused, staring hard at the paper. Idly, although her eyes were still focused fiercely on the list in front of her and suspiciously bright, she pressed several deep lines into the paper with the tip of her pen.

She stirred suddenly, tossed her head to shake off the tiredness that had settled—she hadn't been sleeping well.

She ripped off the page, and set it above the full pad of paper, on her desk. She drew to columns on the second page, and labeled one "Pros" and one "Cons." After a minute's pause, she wrote "Does Hiei Love Me" at the top.

She filled in the negative section first, starting at the top and working down.

_Tried to kill me.  
__Manipulative.  
__Inhuman.  
__Has only ever loved Yukina.  
__Never even liked me— presi president _precedent  
_Unlike him.  
__Way to gain back trust?  
__Or just confuse me  
__Tried to kill Kurama  
__Tried to kill Keiko  
__Tried to kill Yusuke and Kuwabara  
__Killed others  
__Stolen  
__Tried to take over the world  
__Doesn't make sense  
__Possibly gone already_

She paused for a minute, then crossed out the last line. She looked the list over for a minute, then started on the other side.

_Nothing obvious to gain  
__I'm not an obvious choice  
__Seems to honestly care  
__Really did talk to me while I was asleep, I think  
__Embarrassing  
__Not sort of declaration of love you'd use to seduce someone  
__Unless that's on purpose?  
__Has helped me—in the woods  
__Seems frightened of me_

After another pause, she crossed out _seems frightened of me_, then continued writing after another moment.

_Has helped me—in the woods  
__Seems frightened of my reaction to him.  
__Has changed  
__Fought to save Yusuke/Kuwabara/Kurama  
__Fair—sense of justice—moral code_

Botan looked at the written-on page for another long moment, idly drawing and re-drawing a rough circle on the bottom of the page.

Finally, she added _I want him to love me_ at the bottom of both pages.

She wiped away a few stray tears off her face, and went to make herself a cup of tea. A few minutes later, she left to go buy another tea kettle. Her old one was still creaking.

oOo

Do I trust Hiei, Botan asked herself, waiting in the check-out line at the store, her new kettle held in her hands. She didn't let herself answer, not consciously, but it took more effort than she had imagined it would. She had always been _good_ about not letting herself know what she was thinking.

"Excuse me, but it's your turn to check out," said the woman at the check-out desk, her tone implying that it wasn't for the first time, either. Botan jumped and blushed. "Oh! Excuse me!" she said, blushing with embarrassment, trying to hurry for her wallet and hand the tea-kettle box to the cashier all at once.

She left the store still blushing, but it left her mind quickly. "Do I trust him," she whispered, nearly silent, before she caught herself—she was on a public street, for goodness's sakes!

She finally let herself answer the question as she lay in bed that night. Do I trust Hiei? Yes. I trust him to save me from anyone, except himself, and sometimes my own self. So yes, I trust Hiei that much.

Even if she had loved him—and she didn't, and hadn't—she wouldn't have trusted him enough to say so, not to him. Not even if he had done so first. So Hiei trusted her more than she trusted him. He wasn't as weak as she was.

His words echo across her mind. _"I realized I respected you, for everything you did. You were always… positive, cheerful, and I never understood that. I… I hadn't thought that you must have had your problems as well, and I never saw you… Give in to that. _I never had anyone I could speak to. _I had no one, because no one even knew I was— _capable _of feeling anything. You weren't. You aren't. Anyone I could have approached… They would have laughed, or— Nobody would take me seriously, believe me, if I approached them with something like that. People nearly_ expected _it of you, I certainly did, but you never gave in."_

It was funny, what you find inside someone when they break, some part of her thought. She wanted to cry again, but she had done enough crying already. It was getting ridiculous.

She shook her head, sharply, to clear it.

"I don't want to do anymore of this," she said, after another long, silent moment. She didn't want to deal with this instability, unknowingness, this doubt. Her constant back-and-forth debates weren't getting her anywhere.

Not that there was much else she could do. She didn't even know if it mattered, especially when it came to anyone other than her. Especially when it came to Hiei. For all she knew, he was in Makai or further—or only-Koenma-knew-where, but on Earth—to escape the humiliation of his confessions.

Some ice-shard-sharp part of her mind said, voice cool and calm, that it might just be her that he was escaping. Botan shivered.

She was crying again anyways, but she just ignored it this time, although the salt was stinging her irritated, rubbed-dry eyes. She sniffled miserably.

And she was normally so cheerful! Really, _what_ had happened to her?

Well, she had been poisoned, and so had Hiei. And he had tried to kill her. And— And—

From there, it was painfully complicated. Well, it had been complicated to start with, but the welter of events that had occurred, all at once and all-of-a-sudden…

Botan let her mind drift, not thinking of anything for once. It was restful, peaceful. She shivered after a few minutes, and moved into her bed, wrapping her comforter around her shoulders, displacing her smooth sheets to burrow her feet underneath them, although she didn't lie down. She yawned helplessly anyways. Sleeping had been difficult, the past few days.

She wondered where Hiei was.

oOo

Botan woke up still half slumped-over on her bed, although in her sleep she had shifted the blankets to cover her more fully.

She moved out of the uncomfortable position stiffly—sleeping that way, especially on her still-healing cuts and bruises, hadn't been a good idea. It had still been the best night of sleep she'd had since before the attack.

She shivered in the cold air of the room as she rose out of her cocoon to look at her alarm clock, red letters glowing dimly in the darkened room. Five thirty in the morning—a truly ungodly hour if there ever was one. She sighed, slumping back on the bed, then hurriedly burrowed back under the covers. She bit back a totally inappropriate curse, and let herself fall back into a dim half-sleep.

She pulled herself out of bed fifteen minutes later, shivering in the cold air of the apartment. It had cooled sharply overnight, although the rain clouds hadn't left. The sky was still the same steely gunmetal gray.

Her legs and joints were aching, and she felt utterly, inappropriately, old. She did her imitation of the old woman two floors down and an apartment to the right, giggling slightly—she was fairly decent, if she said so herself. (And she did have to be the one to say so. Some things did _not_ leave the privacy of her bedroom.)

She sobered after just a few seconds. There were some things she didn't want other people seeing, and she had been watched before. And she didn't know where Hiei was, and he had promised he wouldn't look, but Hiei wasn't the sort to let a petty thing like words get in the way of something he wanted to do. And even if he didn't have any darker ulterior motives, Botan easily believed him capable of ignoring her wishes—even if he did care for her—to make sure that she was safe, if it was what he wanted.

As safe as she could ever be. She had almost been killed by one of her friends, one of the people she trusted, almost been killed by the man who now professed to love her. She had been surrounded by the four best fighters in all the three worlds, some of the most powerful beings who had ever existed, and she had almost died, cut down by one of their own. Not a victim of friendly fire, exactly.

She put on some of her warmest clothes and then rifled through her closet until she found the coat she wanted—the big, ugly, very warm one—and headed out the door, dropping her house key into her pocket as she went. Just like she remembered, her gloves were still stuffed into that same pocket, left over from the last spell of cold weather. She pulled her hood down over her ears, and zipped the front up the rest of the way. Botan set out for the park with a determined stride, ignoring the twinge of sore muscles from her legs, the stiffness of her ankle, the pull of the scars and scabs where Hiei had cut into her side.

A walk would do her some good.

oOo

Botan was halfway through her second circle of the park nearest her house—not the one that Hiei favored; this was much more civilized, less wild—when she finally slowed down. Her breath was coming hard, visible in the cold morning air. It had started sleeting, the past days' rain just starting to freeze. Nothing was worse than sleet, Botan thought. At least snow was pretty.

She just stood there for a few minutes, the trees dreary and gray around her. It was a winter morning, but her mind was, for once, blissfully clear of any problems other than the fact that she was losing feeling in her fingers, despite the now-soaked-through gloves.

"Botan," said a quiet voice, still a fair distance off and to the right. She turned to face him.

"Hiei," she said in quiet response. "Oh. I almost thought you had left."

He looked down-right affronted, and, ordinarily, Botan would have giggled at the sheer absurdity of that expression on his face.

But then he looked away, and the expression was even less funny than it had been to begin with.

"Yes," he said, voice low, and dark with somehow unthreatening implications Botan didn't even know how to begin to decipher.

"Thanks—thank you," she said, not sure why she said it at all, not sure why she had corrected herself, used the more formal version.

"Were you following me?" some wary part of her asked, after a minute. Hiei drew back again, taking a few smooth steps back, as if she was dangerous, and possibly going to attack him—not that _Hiei_ would ever back away from a fight; the only people less likely to were Yusuke and Kuwabara—but still, if he had been anyone else (except for Yusuke and Kuwabara) the thought would have stood.

_As if she was possibly going to attack him,_ her mind whispered back to her, and Botan knew that she had attacked him, really. And Hiei had backed away. There wasn't a rush of power, no smug self-satisfaction, like she half-expected there to be; there was just a blank confusion, an utter lack of understanding: the world just wasn't supposed to work that way.

Of course, the world hadn't been working right for a while. _That_ was the problem, really. Not that having something to blame like an flawed operating system for the world made the problems go away.

"I guess I just keep on finding you, then," she said, with a small private half-smile at the ground, one that faded quickly. She couldn't see Hiei, but she wondered if he had flinched again.

"Yes," he said, and the grief, the pain, in his voice made Botan gasp.

"What…?" she said, and didn't know where to go from there. She didn't know what needed to be asked, anymore.

"I never meant for you to have to see me again," Hiei said, and Botan was drawn to look at him, lifting her head up to meet his eyes—his own gaze was firmly centered on her—which were wide with that welter of emotions she still couldn't name. Any emotion she could come up with seemed… Insufficient.

"I didn't… Didn't want to…"

Hiei's breath was harsh with frustration, with sorrow, with impatience and too much patience and love.

"I didn't want to make you go through what you keep on putting yourself through, _damn_ it all," he said finally, voice low and angry. Botan would be afraid, but even she can tell that none of the anger is directed at her. She can hear the self-loathing in Hiei's tone. "I frighten you. You can't relax around me, can't even forget I'm there. You can't even ignore me. You _fear_ me, and it is_all. My. Fault_ Even if I wanted to force my presence into your life, anymore than I already have, I would never really be around you again—and I'm not, because you're not yourself around me. You shouldn't be this frightened of anything, this untrusting, but you _are_ and I know who caused the problem. I know you do, too. And so I tried to leave you—

"But you keep on tracking me down, Botan, you keep on finding me. I can't even leave you in peace, can't even give you that much. You asked me to _come back_, to go into your home a second time, and I'm not _good_. My best intentions aren't enough when you are asking me to be near to you, even when you react with fear and panic and near-panic and mistrust. Of course I came."

Hiei broke off suddenly, taking the breath in to say more but not. He frowned darkly, glaring, and turned away from the woman in front of him. He fought back the urge to cry again: he had some pride.

"Oh," said Botan, sounding stunned. "You—You sound as if you really do… do love me."

Hiei was 20 feet away from her and turned to face her before Botan could blink. One hand was grasping hard at the hilt of his sword, hard enough that his knuckles were white, and the sudden movement and the hand at his sword was enough to make Botan's own breath come sharp and afraid, She backed up another step, pressed her spine into the rough tree trunk behind her. She could feel drops of sap against her skin, and knew there would be more in her hair and along her back, but couldn't make herself care.

"I— I—" Botan said.

Hiei forcefully pried his hand of his sword hilt, held his hand stiffly open at his side, then laughed, but there wasn't any humor in the sound. "No. Of course. I should have known better, to think that you would just take me at my word. I should have known. You wouldn't have believed me even before I had almost killed you—the second time, at least. You didn't know me before the first time, really. But now? I'm a fool."

"I don't _know!_" Botan half-shouted, half-yelled. "I don't know _anything_—"

There was the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path. Hiei was suddenly gone—probably into the bushes or up a tree, Botan knew. She didn't think about how he could be anywhere in the clearing, and she wouldn't know.

"Miss?" said an older gentleman, coming into view around a bend in the path. "Is everything alright? I heard shouting."

"Oh!" said Botan, quickly drying her errant tears on a sleeve. "No. No, I'm, um, practicing for a play. I wanted to try it outdoors, right? I'm stuck on this one point, and I don't want to try it around the rest of the cast until I get it figured out. I'm so sorry I disturbed you! I'll try to be quieter, okay?" She plastered on the sunniest smile she could manage and prayed.

"No, of course! A play. You're very convincing—I could have sworn you weren't acting out a thing. Well, I'll leave you to it—don't want to interrupt your creative process, you know. I was in a play once, actually. Wasn't any good at it, but it was demmed good fun. Well, I'm glad everything's okay…"

"Thank you!" Botan called out to his retreating back as he left, breathing a sigh of relief after he'd fully disappeared.

Slowly, Hiei drew back out of the bracken and underbrush he'd disappeared into. Silence fell, broken only by the piercing shrill of a bird further in the forest.

"I _want_ to trust you," Botan said finally. "I don't know why, but I do. I don't know if I can."

"_Why?_" said Hiei, voice filled with desperation and disbelief and hope.

"I want to be a better person than I am," said Botan. She wondered why she was telling him this. She lifted a hand, wiped the melted sleet that kept on trickling onto her face away.

Hiei looked baffled, before his face returned to what she had begun to think of as the default: pained and fierce, still shuttered but more vulnerable than she had ever seen him before. More loving. More hopeless.

"One of us has killed people," he said softly. "You don't even know the extent of the crimes I have committed. Even the ones you _are_ aware I have committed are… unforgivable."

"You were trying, too."

He had been. "But 'trying' is not enough to make up for what I have done. It's all I could do, but it does not make me a _good person_."

"And I want, more badly than I should, I want someone to love me." Botan smiled bitterly. "It makes it very hard to trust you, because I know I want it. Just because I want to know that I am a good enough person that, out of a world full of other girls, someone would choose _me._ It's stupid, and silly, and selfish, but I want to be loved, even if it ends. Even if I don't love that person back."

Hiei flinched again.

"I don't expect you to forgive me. I don't expect you to _love me_." His tone was flat, expressionless, to hide the pain.

"Yes. I don't love you." Botan's voice was equally flat, but Hiei couldn't tell what emotion it was hiding. Her face was calm, composed, serene.

Hiei was careful not to flinch, this time. He knew it already, and it would be stupid to react to a known fact.

"But I trust you more than I think. This park is utterly deserted, right? You could force me to take you to the demon planes and then kill me once we arrived—or just set me loose without your protection, which would do the same thing—and there's a good chance you would never be found. You could hold me hostage, and get whatever you asked for, within reason—Koenma's protective of the ferry girls, even if Enma wasn't. It would have been easy to slip a little extra poison into my bloodstream while I was sleeping. It would have been beyond easy to just stay and watch me after I had slipped in that park, and maybe even left while the wind and the cold and my wounds finished me off. To be very sure, you could have helped them along. You didn't, though. And I'm here, alone, when nobody knows I'm here, in this park, with _you_, and I am afraid but it is not because of what you might do to me. And I am aware of how _very_ much more capable than me you are, don't worry."

"You should be afraid."

"But I'm not, particularly. Why? Are you going to hurt me?" Her tone was for a polite question.

"No." There wasn't any hesitation in Hiei's immediate response. "But _you_ don't know that. You shouldn't trust me, shouldn't rely on me, shouldn't believe in me, after what I've done."

"I've done it once, already."

Hiei just _looked_ at her, gaze slow and steady and hurting with the slow, smoldering pain of acceptance.

"I am afraid of you," said Botan. Hiei looked away. "But I am not afraid that you will hurt me." Her voice was soft and rich and deliberate.

"You don't make sense," said Hiei, nearly snapping at her, his attitude and tone closer to what it had usually been, before he had tried kill her.

"I'm afraid of being underwater, but I'm never really afraid I'm going to drown," said Botan. "Just because something frightens me doesn't mean it's a reasonable fear, and that I really think there's danger involved." She leveled a cool gaze in his direction, position offering a challenge.

Hiei turned smoldering eyes towards her, then drew his sword, shifting into a new position, blade lowered in her direction. Her breath froze in her throat, and she flinched backwards as she fought the urge to throw herself back, away from Hiei. She could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears. There were fresh tears running down her cheeks—no doubt her face was red and blotchy. She knew her eyes would be irritated—they were burning from the new salt, but she couldn't blink. It would mean looking away.

A few seconds later Hiei dropped the stance, sword slipping back into the sheath. He half-turned away from her again, walked another ten feet away, slowly and cautiously, as if the ground had become eggshells underneath him.

"I am sorry," he said lowly. "I shouldn't have done that. I didn't—mean to threaten you. I've never meant to frighten you, but that was—

"So much worse. I just threatened you. I just—I'm sorry, _sorry_."

Botan let herself collapse, falling to the ground as her knees gave out, still pressing her back to the pine behind her for the slight comfort of having something solid behind her. She knew she was sobbing, and after a minute she raised fingers caked with dirt from where they had clutched at the ground to scrub them off her face, smearing mud over herself. She wiped them on a corner of her shirt, then tried again, but she didn't want to let her eyes leave Hiei's. She didn't want him to move when she was looking somewhere else—it would leave her not knowing where he was, _exactly_, even if it was only for a short while.

She should have known better than to challenge him, even wordlessly—and she had not been wordless. She should have known better than to push him, because he might love her—and he might not—but he had never tolerated her, even when she was being polite. She had never been stupid enough to seriously antagonize him before, and it was even worse now.

At least she was still alive, and unhurt. It was probably more than she should have hoped for, all things considered.

She shifted slightly on the ground and shivered. The sleet had started falling again, and she was wet through from the puddles of icy water she had sat in.

Hiei took a step closer to her, and her drifting concentration snapped back to attention. "Yes?" she said, voice wary. She tensed.

"Botan. Listen to me. Please." The clear desperation in his voice was enough to make her pause.

"I'm _sorry_. For everything I've done: for how I treated you before, for attacking you, for not leaving, for threatening you now. I'm not patient, and it _hurt_ to have you stand there and—

"I shouldn't have. I'm _sorry_."

Botan choked on a sob that was halfway to being a laugh. "You keep on _saying_ that," she said, "but then you do the same thing. All over again. It makes it very hard to believe you."

Hiei didn't reply, his face turned firmly to the side.

"I should go," he said, and Botan knew that he was talking about much more than just leaving the park.

"Ignoring it won't make it go away," she said, feeling old and tired.

"It will make it easier for you," said Hiei wearily.

"Don't you think you should ask me that?" snapped out Botan, with more vitriol in her voice than she had wanted. "You keep on saying that you're doing this for me, but then you never ask me what I want."

There was a few more minutes of silence, before the older gentleman from before came walking back around the corner and into the small clearing they were in. "Miss?" he said, looking alarmed. "Miss? Are you alright?"

"Oh, yes!" trilled Botan. "I tripped, I'm afraid—I'm very clumsy, really—but thankfully one of my friends—that's him over there—happened by. He's already made sure that I'm okay."

The man was still frowning slightly. "Okay, then. You should get her inside, though," he said, turning to Hiei, who tried to tone down the glare he was leveling at the man. "It's bitterly cold out today, and you're looking awfully cold, miss."

Botan blushed. "Thank you for your concern. But I'm fine, really! Especially with a friend here to help me."

"Goodbye, then," said the gentleman, leaving with a hesitant glance back over his shoulder.

"He's right," said Hiei a few minutes after the man's departure. "You're too cold. This weather—I should have thought of it. I—shouldn't forget you are human." He was far more upset than her being a little chilly warranted, Botan thought. Although she _was_ awful cold, now that she thought about. It was still sleeting. She was glad she had worn her good coat.

Slowly, she rose back up to her feet, using the tree trunk to support stiffened legs and her still-healing cuts and ankle. She still didn't want to reveal her vulnerabilities, not with Hiei there—not that it would make a difference, and not that he wasn't already aware of them.

She was colder than she had realized, was her first thought, as she stood hesitantly, half-leaning against the tree. The chill breeze that had sprung up stripped what little heat she had still had right out of her, and the cold was enough to make her ache fiercely.

"I need to go home," she said. "To warm up." She took a step that went mostly out to the side, then another. She bit back a curse when her ankle wobbled, aching—she must have put it through too much, what with her walking this morning and then sitting on it the way she had. Her healing ability wasn't working well, either, and so she needed to stop relying on it. Irregardless, she took another step. All she could do now was get home, hopefully without too many looks or remarks at her mud-smeared, wet, tear-stained, bedraggled appearance.

"May I help you?" said Hiei softly, as if he was having to restrain himself from helping her, regardless of her wishes.

Botan shook her head stubbornly 'no,' although her mind flashed back to being held as if she was cherished, being cradled warm and protected against the inhuman heat of Hiei, soaking into her skin. She ignored the hopeless, helpless way he was watching her as she walked away from him, on her own.

She bit back a scream of pure frustration as her leg gave out under her. "Would you… help me," she said, voice refusing to make it a true question.

Hiei slowly circled around until he was back in her line of sight, then slowly walked towards her, moving like someone coaxing some skittish wild animal that might break and run at any time, but was just as likely to lunge forward and attack.

He hesitated and stopped a few feet away from Botan. She dithered for a few minutes, but understood the unasked question—what was she comfortable with letting him do?—before she stepped forward herself, closing the distance between them.

The step unbalanced her again, sending her lunging for something to hold on to before she fell, a very human instinct—she caught his elbow, and he stilled underneath her while she regained her balance. Slowly, in fits and starts, they arranged themselves around each other: Hiei tucked under one of Botan's arms, warm and solid against her side, each with one arm wrapped around the other, like a pair of sweethearts out for a walk. Botan was still shivering, as much with nerves as with cold, now.

Botan was sure that they looked a sight as they walked back to her apartment, clutched around each other desperately, both wet and herself covered in mud, even on the mostly-deserted still-early-morning streets—especially since she thought it was a Sunday—but she missed it if they did. (Probably a blessing in disguise, she was embarrassed enough without making it fully mortified.) Hiei certainly stood out, even all by himself.

All her attention was caught up in Hiei being so close to her, so unignorably present: his smell, not the same as the familiar smell all humans had in common, that smell that was only _human,_ but similar to it, and overlaid with the smells of ash and smoke. And his warmth, like she had remembered from when he had carried her, back in the park: he was fiercely hot to her cold skin, almost enough to hurt where the small stretch of bare skin between her coat sleeve and her glove lay against his neck. She found herself shrinking against him when a fresh gust of wind blew through, and knew he could feel it, too; he would tense underneath her, making her own breath catch in her throat with more than just the cold, although she didn't know why.

oOo

"Don't go," Botan turned to say at him, not sure why she was saying it at all, as she limped down the hallway towards her bedroom and bathroom. She was so _cold_…

She thought about running a bath, but started a shower instead, aware of Hiei waiting for her outside. While she was waiting for the hot water she stripped out of her clothes and investigated her wounds. Mostly, she was healing nicely, but her ankle was looking swollen again, and was tenderer than it should have been.

Botan shrugged it off—nothing she could do about it, really, but be more careful—and made a note to go digging for the crutches she had gotten that time she had broken her leg.

At first, even cool water was enough to make her skin smart with pain. It took her a while to ease herself into the running stream, and then a while longer to slowly increase the heat until she felt warm inside and out. She stayed in five minutes past that, just reveling in clean, hot water and simplicity.

When she finally walked back out into the living room, Hiei was still standing where she'd left him: a short ways away from the door, slightly behind and to the right of one of her armchairs.

"Please, sit down," she said. She thought about saying more, but didn't know what.

Hiei sat down in the chair. Slowly, still moving stiffly, Botan made her way to the other armchair, curled up in it. "Do you want a cup of tea?" she asked, because she did.

"No," said Hiei, blunt. After a second's thought, he added "No, thank you." He sounded awkward and embarrassed. After he didn't add anything else, Botan tried to stand. Hiei was on his feet within the second. "I'll get it," he said, moving towards the kitchen. "Your ankle's hurting you."

"Thank you," said Botan, a little dismayed by his reaction. How badly did he want to help her?

…and why did these sorts of situations always end up with tea in Botan's living room, after a shower, a change of clothes and a check-up on her health?

She stayed where she was while the small noises of someone working in a kitchen sounded. After a few minutes they stopped, although Hiei didn't reappear.

After a long, silent, pause Botan stood and limped her way towards the kitchen.

"You shouldn't be walking—" began Hiei as she stood in the doorway, leaning against one hip to take some of the weight off of her foot.

Botan shrugged, too tired for words even though it was still morning, and Hiei fell quiet.

"…How do you work the stove?" he said, quietly and reluctantly, after a few more seconds of stillness and silence.

Rather than trust her voice, Botan moved forward to do it herself; she flinched when Hiei's hands came up to rest firmly against her sides, supporting her as she leaned awkwardly over the stove to work the dials, still trying to keep off of one of her feet. She flinched, but she carefully stilled herself almost as soon as she began, cutting the motion off. She murmured a quiet "thank you" for the support, but Hiei still snatched his hands away as if she was burning once she was more firmly planted. She could feel the heat his hands left even after they were gone.

"The tea is in the lowest shelf of the upper cupboard to the right of the stove," said Botan after a few more seconds of silence. This time, Hiei was the one to mutter his thanks.

The two moved slowly back into the living room together after the water had been poured, and the tea given a few minutes to steep. Hiei matched himself to Botan's slow pace, carrying the tea but willing to drop it without a second thought if it looked like Botan was going to fall or slip, and Botan slowly, leaning against the wall for support, unwilling or unable to ask for help.

Botan drank her tea black as a rule, but she found herself wishing for milk, sugar or lemon to fiddle with. She was still staring into her teacup as if it was going to come up with an answer to all her problems, but she could still feel Hiei's eyes on her. Eventually, she found the strength to look up: he was carefully looking away from her, and Botan found herself the one staring at the other.

_He looks very sad,_ Botan thought. _And very severe. Almost… Yes, definitely, out of place, here in this very every-day apartment, when he doesn't know what to do._

She found herself, unexpectedly, wanting to comfort him. Hiei shouldn't look out of place, anywhere; his easy confidence and lack of caring were part of who he was. She didn't know what to do with the impulse.

She wanted to say something like "Why are you here, when you're so clearly uncomfortable, when I've never been enough for you to bother with before? When I can see that you don't want to be here, and you even flat-out say as much, and when I don't really want you here, either, and we both know that as well?"

What she ended up saying was "Are you sure you don't want some tea? …Or something else to drink? Food?'

"No," said Hiei. After a minute, he added "Thank you." The word sounded foreign to him.

"Uh," said Botan, then blushed. "That is, I mean, if you're sure?"

"You're hurt. You shouldn't be moving around."

"…if you want something, would you get it for yourself, then? You can just help yourself to anything, and I can just shout out the answers to any questions you might have from here."

"I'm…" Hiei paused before he finished the sentence. "fi—not hungry."

"Oh," said Botan. "Okay." She winced a little, hesitated. "Are… Are you sure?" She cringed a little as she said it, as if she was afraid of Hiei's reaction.

Hiei gave her a look that almost wanted to be amused—and would have been, if it hadn't been for where he was, what he had done. If he had been with anyone else, or if he had been anybody else.

Silently, he stood up—still moving slowly even for a normal person; it was probably glacial, to him, Botan knew, but she recognized the effort, and appreciated it the little she could, for the thought behind it. For the slight peace-of-mind it bought her—and walked into the kitchen. He came back out a few seconds later with a glass of water. Botan squashed the urge to force tea and cookies on him.

For one thing, she didn't think that Hiei was the tea-and-cookies type. Of course, she had never thought that Hiei was of the falling-in-love variety, either, and look where that had led. And he kept on saying he'd fallen for _her_, of all people, and if she'd thought about who Hiei's type was, someone like her (and she wouldn't have considered herself at all) would have been very, very close to the absolute bottom of the list. The most likely candidate would probably have been a stoic warrior princess—demonic, of course—also looking for a convenient relationship. In that sort of context, 'convenient' meant 'somebody who doesn't talk to me.'

She certainly couldn't imagine Hiei as the boyfriend type. Married—kinda-sorta-maybe, but not really. Mated, or whatever else demons in general called it—more probably. Dating? She couldn't see him taking anybody (taking _her_) out to movies and concerts and whatnot. It just… didn't fit.

She couldn't imagine him cuddling with her on the couch, under a few blankets (although maybe not, considering his temperature, another part of her mind mused) with mugs of cocoa against the cold. She couldn't imagine him touching her much at all, certainly not just for the sake of it—she couldn't see him hugging her, or reaching across to brush a strand of hair out of her face, or holding her hand or, yes, snuggling. She couldn't even imagine him eating cookies.

Yeah. If Hiei was going to have hot drinks at all, it would probably be coffee. Black coffee. Or possibly green tea—she preferred black, herself, but she guessed it was because of who she had been before she had become a ferry girl.

_Shut up!_ Botan thought, hard, at her mind.

She really was going crazy.

But it… Wasn't like that. Hiei had carried her home, cradled in his arms, her own arms wrapped around him in an awkward half-hug. Hiei kept on catching her when she fell, and Hiei had walked her home. Hiei had hovered while she had walked the short, un-hazardous distance between her own kitchen and living room—and considering the size of her apartment, that really, truly was not a long ways.

Hiei was sitting in front her sipping at a glass of water because she had insisted in every way there was, short of actually ordering him to eat, that he have _something_. Hiei had jumped at the chance to make her tea, even though he hadn't wanted any himself.

Botan wondered, surprised at the ache that sprang up in her heart, whether or not the touching and the thoughtfulness and the helping would continue if she asked him to stay. (Not with _her,_ of course, but around. Asked him to stay with the team, to stay in the neighborhood, more or less.) Whether that careful tenderness was just some sort of bizarre, guilt-induced side effect that would slowly fade.

She wanted to see Hiei back to being himself, but she didn't want to deal with being who she was to that Hiei again. She _liked_ being somebody special.

"Touch me," she said slowly, voice distant. Then she realized exactly how that could be interpreted, and blushed heavily. "That is— I— Oh, drat it all." She stood, lurching to her feet; Hiei followed her, far more fluid, hovering as if unsure of what to do. Botan reached out, took his wrist, laid his hand over hers. His fingers closed, gently, a seemingly instinctive gesture. There was that warmth, again, and that near-reverence. Botan wondered what, exactly, caused it. Because she was still letting him touch her, despite everything? That she let him that close, even after what he'd done?

He reached out with his other hand, hesitantly and still moving so slowly, to steady her, arm fully extended across the distance between them (the coffee table was keeping them apart, Botan thought wildly, irrationally amused by the thought) and he hesitated, drew back the slightest bit before he gently braced his arm against her hip. Botan took a swaying step forward, as if hypnotized.

…or tried to, anyways. Her knees jarred painfully against the table, making her squawk with surprise and pain. She covered a grimace at the noise she ended up producing. Across from her, Hiei dropped his hands as Botan's crash into the table ended up pushing it into his own knees. Again, Botan could feel the ghostly, fading patches of heat his hands had left against her skin.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" she managed to gasp out.

Hiei simply shook his head, wordlessly.

"Oh, I'm so clumsy sometimes, I can't believe I did that…" Botan trailed off. There was water and now-cold tea spilled over the table as well, threatening to drip down onto the carpeting.

"It's nothing," said Hiei quietly. He hesitated, then started speaking again. "It's nothing. Botan, you should sit down."

"But the tea—" Botan didn't care much for the carpets the apartment had come with, but she didn't that stains would improve the effect, even if they _did_ help the rather unfortunate color.

"I'll go," said Hiei shortly. He walked quickly to the kitchen, then back out again, with a dishrag. He was careful with the cleaning, running the cloth under the overhang of the tabletop to catch spare drips.

"You can just leave the rag in the sink," Botan called out after him as he returned to the kitchen with the wet dishcloth.

There was a small noise of affirmation. "Thank you," said Botan softly, although she knew that Hiei would hear her, no matter how softly she spoke. The response had surprised Botan, slightly. She still wasn't used to…

To all of this, really. To every new development, starting with the most recent development—politeness—and moving on back: the thoughtfulness, and before that the talking, and before that the confession, and before that the watching, and before that the attack, and the half-remembered, one-sided conversations that had, supposedly (and probably, even she had to admit) happened in-between Hiei almost killing her and Hiei claiming that he loved her.

"I think I bruised my kneecaps," said Botan, because she needed to say _something_.

Hiei turned to the side, hiding his face from her. She probably could have seen it, if she had tried, leaned far to one side, but she didn't want to suffer the embarrassment doing something like that would cause. Surprisingly, she hadn't caught any amusement in his expression as it had flashed by.

"Why are you here?" Botan asked finally. She still couldn't answer any of the questions she had on her list, but now it was as much because there was _too much_ to say as it was because she didn't know. There weren't words for half of what she was feeling, and maybe more.

Hiei didn't answer for a long, slow, painful minute.

"I don't want to leave," he said finally. Botan waited patiently for the rest of his answer. "Even though I should."

"Alright," said Botan, finality heavy in her tone. They both knew that what she talking about wasn't anything little or inconsequential, anything temporary. "Please stay." She wasn't sure why she was asking this, of _Hiei_ of all people, but it was the right thing to do. That would have to be enough.

And Hiei looked at her and burst into tears.

oOoOoOo

"That I did always love,  
I bring thee proof:  
That till I loved  
I did not love enough."

--_Proof_ by Emily Dickinson

oOoOoOo

Botan did another nervous round of her apartment. There simply wasn't anything left to do. She re-straightened the curtains, but it just creased the fabric more, and she gave up in disgust after a few seconds of fidgeting.

Then she went into the bathroom and checked her hair again. She was moments away from taking it all out, bobby pins and everything, and starting again entirely when she heard a steady knock on the door.

She resisted the urge to run to answer it, but only because she knew he would hear it. Botan took in a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out again, slowly—and then she giggled nervously, because calming breaths only ever did so much.

And then she went to answer the door.

"Hiei," she said softly, as she pulled the door open.

He inclined his head stiffly in greeting. "Botan," he said, voice awkward, but she thought she could see genuine warmth in his eyes.

"Please, come in," she said shyly, looking down to brush at a nonexistent crease in her skirt as she stepped aside so Hiei could enter.

This time, Hiei didn't hesitate or argue. He still didn't look comfortable in her living room, but somehow the situation made it alright. That, and she _had_ seen him at ease there, before. Usually only when the rest of the Tantei was around, but that was enough.

"I've just got to get everything put into the basket," explained Botan as she left Hiei standing in the living room, calling over her shoulder as she moved into the kitchen. She didn't even try getting him to sit down and relax, and knew that he would probably appreciate the gesture, if he recognized what she was doing. Botan had to say, she didn't feel much like relaxing herself at the moment.

She was suddenly glad for one of her mid-morning bouts of nervous energy—the one that had resulted in all of the picnic things arranged in careful order for packing in specified places. The plates and cutlery were already in place in place in the picnic basket, cushioned in the blanket, and most of the non-refrigerated items, except for a few things that needed to be stuck in at the top, so they wouldn't end up crushed. They were placed carefully on the counter, next to the basket.

It was a matter of seconds to get everything together, especially considering her still-tense state.

And then it was time to go. Botan checked her reflection once more, quickly, then hurried back to Hiei.

It wasn't every day that she had a real date.

oOo

Hiei wasn't sure, but he thought that Botan had taken extra care with her appearance. He couldn't really tell the difference, much, but the thought that she had wanted to look nice for _him_ was… extremely appealing. Heartwarming. Comforting.

He glanced sideways at her, and resisted the urge to reach to the side to touch her—run his hand along hers, maybe—at the sweet, unaware half-smile on her face. It grew into a full one when she noticed him watching, and Hiei smiled, almost a little shy, back.

He didn't object when she reached out to grab a hold of his hand, as if she was being a little daring—he didn't really think that either of them knew what to do, which made him feel better. But it was nice, having her fingers tangled in his. Her skin was always cool and smooth, and her thumb was smoothing a circle into his hand, although he didn't think she was really aware of what she was doing. She did things like that, Hiei had learned, and then got embarrassed when she noticed what she was doing.

They were close enough that he could feel the electrical tangle of her energy shuddering along his skin, and he was still ecstatically happy that he could feel that, that he hadn't ended up killing her after all. No matter what happened, that would have been enough, that she had lived.

He was almost as happy that he was with Botan, though, around her at all, and that Botan was at least considering loving him back. The whole idea of 'dating' seemed simultaneously silly, frivolous and sensible at the same time to him, but it only seemed wondrous when he thought about Botan and himself.

No matter what happened, Botan was alive, and that was enough. And he'd had this—holding hands, and shy glances, and Botan at least willing to consider him and love in the same sentence—which would always be more than enough, and more than he deserved.

"Oh! I hope it doesn't rain," said Botan suddenly, breaking the silence, as she peered up at the sky, shading her eyes with her free hand. "It's looking kind of cloudy. If it rains, we'll have to do something else today and go one the picnic sometime else. Oh well—there's always tomorrow!"

And there was always tomorrow. And Botan seemed to think that she would be there, and that was enough for Hiei, and more.

oOoOoOo

"And all shall be well,  
and all manner of thing  
shall be well."

--Julian of Norwich

oOoOoOo

--End Accidents and Aftermath--


End file.
